“Anyone with kids can understand her reaction, but...”
“What is it?” asked Frazer.
“You going to see Bryce next?”
Frazer nodded. A feeling of dread squeezed Mallory’s insides.
“Bear in mind he’s the one who lost a child this time. He might not make rational choices either.”
Frazer filled him in on the few details they knew about the cases. It wasn’t much. “As soon as we have a profile we’ll send it to you and assist your department in any way we can.” They stood to go.
At the door to the conference room, the sheriff stopped her for a moment while Frazer went ahead. “Good to see you doing so well, Agent Rooney.” He squinted. “You must be one of the youngest agents in BAU history.”
Mallory forced a smile. “I do believe I may have that honor, Sheriff. For now anyway,” she added quietly.
Outside in the main atrium of the sheriff’s office she caught the eye of another deputy staring at her intently. She frowned and stopped walking. Pointed her finger at him. “I remember you.”
He gave her a shy smile and stepped forward and held out his hand. “We used to play together as kids. I can’t believe you recognized me. You’d remember me as Seany Kennedy.” He pulled an embarrassed face. “Deputy Sean Kennedy, nowadays.”
“We used to go swimming in the quarry during the summer.”
“Now, ma’am, I wasn’t about to say that I’d seen you naked but since you brought it up.”
She laughed. “I think we were, what? Five?”
“I do believe I might even have been six or seven, Miss Mallory.”
She pointed self-consciously to her shield. “Agent Rooney nowadays, Deputy Kennedy. Just call me Mallory.” She remembered Sean as a chubby kid with a soft heart. He’d slimmed out some.
“I thought you were going to be a lawyer?” He settled back against his desk.
“So did my parents.”
“I bet that went down well.” He tucked his arms over a broad chest. “At least some good came out of what happened to Payton.” The fact he’d said her sister’s name out loud, the fact that he’d known her, was incredibly moving. Some days it was like Payton was nothing but a photograph on a police report. But that wasn’t the real Payton. The real Payton had been sweet and generous and had loved Scooby Doo, swimming, Disney movies and ice cream. Not many people remembered that.
“You joined the FBI, and I joined the sheriff’s office. Fighting bad guys as best we can.”
“Always plenty of bad guys to fight.”
“Ain’t that the truth?”
Frazer was eyeing her from the doorway with irritation. She needed to go.
Sean noticed the direction of her gaze and stood. “It sure is nice seeing you again after all these years. Does a heart good to know life can go on after tragedy.”
“It was good to see you too.” She choked up as she shook his hand. Actually wanted to hug the guy, but managed to hold herself back. Her mother wouldn’t have approved of such uncontrolled displays of emotion and neither would her supervisor. “We should catch up sometime. Dad wants us all to come out here for Christmas—one last family get together before he sells Eastborne.”
“I didn’t know he was selling up. It’s a shame, but I guess I’m not surprised.” He pressed his lips together and gave her a sad nod. “I’d like to catch up at Christmastime, Agent Mallory.”
She laughed, gave him her card and walked briskly to find Frazer. She hadn’t realized just how deeply her sister’s disappearance had affected this entire community and all the people who’d worked on the case, including the icy cool SSA Frazer. She should have come and talked to these people years ago; maybe then she’d remember exactly what happened that night.
***
The Keebles lived in a rundown house on the edge of Greenville, within a stone’s throw of the railway tracks. It needed a fresh coat of paint, the front porch sagged slightly at the northwest corner, but the grounds were neat with no trash lying around. A wreath decorated the front door, and Mallory would bet everything she owned that she knew who put it there. A dog—half pit bull, half coon hound—snoozed in the dirt. He stirred himself enough to start barking when they pulled up and got out of the car.
Mallory eyed the dog warily. A yell from inside the house had the dog giving a disgruntled snarl and curling back into the dirt. She liked dogs but didn’t trust the malevolent glint in the old dog’s opaque eyes. Frazer surprised her by dropping to his haunches and giving the mutt’s head a scratch. The dog stretched out his neck for better access.
Great.
A man came to the door. Their eyes connected and he gave a start as recognition hit. She remembered him vividly now that she’d seen him again. He’d given her and Payton piggyback rides, taken them for jaunts on the back of his dirt bike and generally joked and teased them.
His face was older, broader, coarser than it’d been eighteen years ago. She and Payton had thought him handsome back then. Not today. The whites of his eyes were crimson, irises black, face a splotchy, unhealthy red. His hair had been shiny blue-black but was now streaked salt-and-pepper gray.
“Mr. Keeble?” Frazer approached the man with his hand outstretched. “Supervisory Special Agent Frazer. This is Special Agent Rooney.”
Bryce Keeble shook Frazer’s hand without dropping Mallory’s gaze. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re investigating your daughter’s murder. We need to ask you a few questions.”
“Feds?” His gaze ping-ponged between them. “Do you know who did it yet?”
Frazer shook his head. “We don’t have a clear suspect at this time.”
Bryce Keeble’s head bobbed as he raised his chin. “You come to pin it on me? Come to make a grieving man suffer?” He gave a hollow laugh and opened his front door and waved them inside. “Not that I give a shit.”
There was no doubt this man was hurting, that his whole world had been ripped away. It didn’t mean he didn’t do it, but he wasn’t high on her suspect list.
Frazer stood in the living room looking out of place and overdressed. There were pictures of Lindsey everywhere. The place was clean but messy. Empty mugs littered the surface. Cigarette smoke hung heavy in the air.
“Never let me smoke in the house—Lindsey.” His voice caught and broke. “She wouldn’t let me smoke anywhere but outside and busted my ass even when she caught me doing that.”
“She was a smart girl.” Mallory eyed the overflowing ashtrays. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Mr. Keeble.”
He glared at her for a moment, nostrils flaring, eyes watering with a sudden onslaught of tears. “People keep saying that to me.” He lit a cigarette from the box beside an old worn-out recliner, inhaling the smoke like it was oxygen. He blew out a thick curling stream that made her cough. “I’m sorry for your loss? What do I say to that? ‘That’s okay’? ‘Thank you’? I mean what the fuck do you do when people say that to you?” His eyes drilled into her, wanting an answer. Wanting a way of dealing with the awful reality of having lost the only thing that truly mattered.
A dark truth escaped from somewhere deep inside as she held his gaze. “People aren’t saying it for your benefit. Not really. They mean well but the words let them acknowledge the tragedy and move on. People like you and I, we can’t move on, not at first.” Emotion made her voice rough. “Losing someone to violent crime isn’t like normal loss. We grieve differently than other people. We hate differently.”
His eyes locked on hers because now he knew she understood him completely.
“That hatred can either swallow us up, or we learn to let it go.” Which path had she chosen? She didn’t know yet. “Nothing makes grief better except time.”
His eyes burned, fiery red. “I suppose you heard it often enough.”
Way too many times to count.
“I’d like to see Lindsey’s room if I may?” SSA Frazer cut in. He’d catalogued the exchange like the profiler he was. Had probab
ly learned more about her than Bryce Keeble.
“Help yourself but don’t take nothing without asking.”
“I won’t.” He looked at Mallory pointedly. “Agent Rooney can make you some tea or coffee.”
She felt her eyes widen but nodded. That she could do. She walked into the kitchen and tried not to wince. Although it wasn’t filthy there was a strong smell from the garbage and piles of dirty dishes in the sink.
There was no coffeepot so she filled the tea kettle on the electric stove and opened the dishwasher and gingerly started stacking it. She may as well help on a practical level because she’d gotten a clear ‘get lost’ signal from Frazer. She felt eyes on her from the doorway. Bryce Keeble had followed her.
“I take it Lindsey was the housekeeper of the pair of you?”
A look of shame swept his features and he stopped slouching against the doorframe. “I’m not usually a slob, I just...find it hard to care.”
The heartbreak in his eyes undid her. “She wouldn’t want this to destroy you, Mr. Keeble. She loved you. From what I’ve heard Lindsey was a tough and determined young woman.” She tried not to picture her corpse under that white sheet.
Tears streamed down his face and he wiped them on his shoulder. “She was tough and determined. After her mother let her down she learned to take control of her own destiny... Someone ripped that away from her.” He swallowed repeatedly. “She’d have fought him and he’d have hurt her more because of it. And she’d have been waiting for me to save her.” A sob ripped free. God, she understood that sort of guilt. “The way I was supposed to save her.” His breath was a raw choking rasp. “I want to find the person who did this and rip them apart with my bare hands.” His fists were doing just that.
“Vengeance isn’t the way to deal with this,” she tried to calm him. “Don’t betray your daughter’s memory by ending up in prison. Let us do our jobs.”
“Like the cops did for your sister, you mean?” His expression turned scathing and bitter. “They thought it was me, did you know that?” He took a step toward her. Too close in the tiny kitchen. After her encounter with those intruders in her home she was jumpier than she used to be. It pissed her off. “When they figured it wasn’t me, your bitch mother fired me anyway because someone told her I used to take you girls on the back of my bike. ‘It’s too dangerous’.” He mimicked her mother. “Well, I never hurt anyone, but the cops never did me a blind bit of good.” His voice rose, his body language was getting increasingly aggressive. She forced herself not to put her hand on her weapon because she knew how much he was hurting.
The anger in his face dissolved to be replaced by misery. “I just realized something else. If someone as high and mighty as your bitch of a mother can’t get justice, someone like me doesn’t stand a chance.”
“The law doesn’t come with a price tag.”
Bryce sneered. “You keep on believing that.” He whirled, strode to a corkboard near the backdoor and ripped down an old newspaper clipping. He thrust it toward her face and she stopped it with her hand, prepared to take him down if he got any closer. He didn’t. He stepped away. She looked at the piece of paper he’d given her. It was a cutting of one of the first pieces written about Payton’s disappearance and featured a picture of them both on the lawn of Eastborne with their dog lying between them. “I kept it to remind myself never to stop looking for your sister, but she’s dead, just like my Lindsey’s dead and we’ll never figure out what happened to either of them.” The disgust in his eyes made her breath stop.
“I don’t know whether to envy your parents or pity them.” His gaze raked her from head to toe, “On one hand they still have a kid who looks exactly like the one they lost. On the other, the constant reminder must have torn them inside out every single day.”
She’d witnessed that pain in their eyes. Raw emotion rose up and wanted to swamp her but that wasn’t her fault any more than his daughter’s murder had been. “I’m not my sister, Mr. Keeble. We just looked alike.”
Frazer appeared in the doorway as the kettle started to whistle. “Everything all right?”
Bryce Keeble shuffled over to the stove to turn it off. “Fine. I’ve got it.” To her relief, he started filling the sink with hot water and dish soap. Maybe he’d make it through this mess. Maybe.
“We’ll be in touch, Mr. Keeble,” said Frazer.
On the front step he turned, hands on hips. “What the hell was that?”
She pressed her lips tight together and ignored him. She couldn’t speak. The dog wagged his tail at Frazer but eyed her with suspicion. She ignored the mutt and got in the Lexus. She’d stopped caring about whether or not she impressed SSA Frazer. She smoothed out the newspaper cutting and laid it over her knees, staring at the fragile yellowed paper. Keeble was right. It had been hard for her parents since Payton was taken. They’d never found justice. Never got closure. Her sister had been taken and no one had ever known why. She wanted to prove Keeble wrong about cops. She wanted to believe in the system. She wanted to find justice for Lindsey and her grieving father. Then, maybe, there was still a glimmer of hope she’d get justice for her family. They all deserved that.
***
He came down the steps whistling. It was almost Thanksgiving and he had a lot to be thankful for. He’d sent Mallory Rooney a little gift in the mail this morning and felt better than he had in months. The girl sat up on the bed.
“How you feeling today?”
She smiled nervously. “O-okay. Sore, I guess.”
They’d had sex twice. Nothing adventurous. Nothing rough. Nice and slow and easy; he’d been a considerate lover. He’d used a condom—he wasn’t ready to commit to any other level of trust just yet, but he was considering the idea of starting a family. He glanced around at the space. There was no way they could raise a child here but he’d given it some thought. That was his biggest regret with Payton. Not having a baby with her.
“I brought you some clothes.” He held out the garments he’d picked up in a big box store over in the next county when he’d arranged to send his package.
She reached for them. “Thank you.”
Her nails were dirty. She could probably use a bath. “Want me to heat some water to wash with before you put on your new things?”
She cleared her throat. “That would be nice, thank you.”
Well brought up and good manners. His mother would have approved.
He put a pan of water on the propane stove on the counter top. When he turned around she was still sitting on the bed. He was amused by her coyness. “You’ll need to get undressed.”
Her hands gripped the new clothes tighter. He frowned. It was natural to be uneasy around men but surely he’d proved he wasn’t going to hurt her? He’d gone out of his way to make sure she’d enjoyed it too.
“Don’t be shy.” The sharpness of his tone startled her into action and she started undoing the buttons of her shirt. She folded it and placed her bra neatly on top. She pulled off her jeans and socks, one leg catching on the chain around her leg. He knelt down and undid the shackle so she could properly change. One day they wouldn’t need the chain.
She stood before him, naked, head bent in submission.
“That’s better.”
He dipped the washcloth in the warm water and tipped up her chin. Washed the dirt and grime from around her mouth and cheeks. Her lips were a deep natural red. Hair fine and almost black. He did sweeps down her neck, holding her long tresses up out of the way while he worked. She shivered, nipples turgid red peaks against milk pale skin. She was slim to the point of scrawny, except for full breasts, which were bigger than Payton’s had been but he had to admit he liked them anyway. Blue veins were visible under the translucent skin. He felt himself growing hard but forced himself to wash all of her because he’d promised. Along her arms, hands, each finger, her nails. “Turn around.” He rinsed out the cloth and washed her back, her buttocks, her legs, feet. By the time he made her turn around again he was almo
st bursting out of the top of his jeans. “Open.” He pointed to her legs and she obeyed without hesitation. From his knees he looked up at her face but she avoided his gaze. He liked the way she did what she was told even though she was inexperienced.
He ran the warm cloth up one delicate ankle, up the inside of one leg, and then the other. The shackle had rubbed her ankle and he made a mental note to bring longer socks.
When she was clean, he leaned forward and kissed her stomach. She went to take a step back. “Don’t. Move,” he warned her. He met her gaze, eyes so dark he couldn’t have said what color her irises were if he hadn’t already known. “Lie down on the bed.”
She did and he smiled as she lay there shivering with her legs pressed tight together. She might not be Payton, but she did what she was told. Maybe one day she’d try to please him the same way Payton had pleased him. One day.
“Spread your legs for me.”
She parted them just a little bit.
“Wider,” he bit out impatiently.
She did so immediately.
“That’s better, sweetheart.” She needed to know who was boss. But he needed to remember she was unsure and nervous and to give her time. She wasn’t like those others. Or like Payton’s slutty sister. “You keep pleasing me the way you’ve been doing and everything is going to turn out just fine. I’ll take care of you. I promise.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
P!nk’s “Blow Me” was playing on her iPod as she drove home, and she too had had a shit day. Actually her second full week at the BAU had been so bad that the stress headache pounding her temples was preferable to being at work. She’d worked straight-through Thanksgiving with the promise to her parents she’d make it up to them at Christmas. The joys of public service.
She wanted to crawl under her duvet and sleep for two days straight.
There had been no additional cases of abductions reported or bodies found with PR carved into the skin—which was good news. They hadn’t got the results back from the possible DNA samples the ME sent to the lab yet, so there was still hope the killer might have screwed up and be in the system.
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