She wasn’t sure why these murders affected her when the victims of the Butterfly Killer and Craig Sloan’s twisted acts hadn’t, but the fact that they did remained.
She took a deep breath, and then turned to Agent Stitts. He was looking at her again, but there was no judgment in his face.
“Sorry,” she grumbled.
Stitts shook his head.
“Don’t apologize. You know what the difference between you and I is?”
Chase remained silent as she started the car.
“I’m better at internalizing the pain I see in others, pushing it deep down in my gut where it toils with my own anguish. That’s all. But don’t let it fool you; I feel it. I feel it with every breath I take. One of the worst things that has happened to society is the pervasive notion that showing emotion, of being vulnerable, is a weakness. It’s not. It’s a strength. You’re stronger than me, Chase. That’s the real difference between you and I.”
The candid speech took Chase by surprise. For as long as she could remember, she wanted to be an FBI agent. But in all that time, she had thought of it as a cold, hardened institution set on solving the most difficult, and the most heinous, of crimes.
In her mind, the FBI was uncaring, unforgiving, and above all else, infallible.
And maybe that’s what drew her to it in the first place.
But the front that Agent Stitts was presenting… was, well, unnerving to say the least.
And Chase wasn’t sure how she felt about it.
“Where should I take you?” she asked dryly. “You staying in a hotel?”
Stitts nodded.
“Yeah, but you can just drop me at the precinct. I’ve got my rental there. Do you want to talk about the case? We can wait until morning, if it suits you better.”
Chase chewed her lip. She wanted to wait until tomorrow, but thoughts were already festering in her head. If she went home and tried to sleep now, it would never come, she knew.
She checked the clock on the dash. It was almost ten.
“It’ll take about forty minutes to get back to the precinct. We can talk as I drive.”
Agent Stitts agreed.
“Good,” he said softly. “I’ll start. There’s no way that Tanya new Melissa. No way. Not even in some sort of bizarre tutoring relationship. And although the reactions of Melissa’s and Tanya’s parents were very different, they were both genuine. They had nothing to do with either of their deaths.”
“Hmph,” was all Chase could manage. This was another twist that she hadn’t expected: such conclusiveness, and at such an early stage of their investigation. And yet, Agent Stitts had just verbalized her very thoughts.
“So, if they didn’t know each other, how did the killer pick them?” she asked. “They’re both young women around thirty years of age. But Melissa was plump, out of shape, and Tanya was thin, on the verge of being skinny. Melissa had brown hair, Tanya blond.”
Agent Stitts hesitated before commenting.
“Random?”
Chase mulled this over for a moment.
Unlike the man’s previous comment, his voice had wavered slightly while uttering the word ‘random’.
Is this a test? Did he see something and wants to know if I saw it, too?
Chase shook her head and decided then and there that she would just be herself, do whatever she did that got her to this position in the first place.
She wasn’t about to change who she was or become preoccupied with what others thought about her. Not now. Not after all she had been through.
“Honestly? I’ve never heard of a truly random killer. There’s a connection between them, between Tanya and Melissa. Two women, around the same age, murdered in tandem? Can’t be a coincidence.”
Agent Stitts nodded.
“So, what’s the connection then? It’s not their socio-economic status, that’s for sure. Their looks, then? Maybe. A general hatred toward women of child-bearing age? It wouldn’t be the first—”
“Shh,” Chase said without thinking. Her cheeks started to flush, but she forced this feeling away.
Don’t blush—you’re a fucking police sergeant for Christ’s sake. Act like one.
“There’s something… something…” she let her sentence trail off.
There was something, something in common between the two women. It wasn’t something that she saw, necessarily, at least, not at Melissa’s, but something her mother—
“Books,” she said. The word came out more as an apology than an exclamation as she had intended.
“Excuse me?”
“Books—that’s the connection. Ms. Green said that Melissa was too busy reading or going to the library to look after her children,” her words sped up as she gained confidence, “And Tanya’s mother—remember when she took us up to Tanya’s room? There were books everywhere, but not just law books. Novels. There were dozens on the shelves. Did you see them?”
“Yeah, I saw them.”
And with that unenthused response, Chase’s confidence was suddenly shot.
Books? How many people have books in their homes? And the library? How many thousands of people go to the library?
“It’s somewhere to start, I guess. Might be nothing, but…”
“No, it sounds… I think there might be something there.”
Chase shrugged and took the off-ramp.
“Let me ask you something,” Stitts continued in a softer tone. “Why didn’t you ask about the lipstick?”
The question took Chase by surprise.
“The lipstick?”
“Yeah, the bloody lips… the lipstick spread over the dead girls’ mouths. You didn’t ask either of the mothers about makeup at all.”
Chase vividly recalled the dark maroon smudges coating the corpses’s otherwise pale lips.
“I… I don’t know.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Chase. You do know. You know it in the same way that you know the books are important.”
The first thing that popped into Chase’s head was so embarrassing that, despite her previous promise to stay true to herself, she couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. It was trite, it was clichéd, and it was borderline demeaning: a woman’s intuition.
In the end, it didn’t matter; Agent Stitts said it for her.
“Intuition, that’s why.”
Chase suddenly felt tired and decided then and there to put an end to the discussion.
“It doesn’t matter anyway, books or no books. Gaining access to library records is almost as difficult as breaking into the Pentagon. Homeland security and Mein Kampf and all that.”
Stitts chuckled.
“Yeah, well. That’s where I come in, I guess. This badge carries some perks, after all.”
CHAPTER 20
Drake opened the black mailbox and then pulled the envelope from his pocket. He weighed it in his hand for a moment, and then put it inside. He closed the lid and then was about to flip the small red flag up when he a door opening and froze.
“Drake? Is that you?”
Drake debated not saying anything and getting back into his car, but realized that this would hardly keep him anonymous.
After all, he drove a conspicuous Crown Vic. Besides, Jasmine had to know who was putting the money in her mailbox all these months… didn’t she?
Drake turned around and put on his best fake smile.
“I was just leaving, Jasmine. Don’t mind me.”
Jasmine Cuthbert tugged the robe of her belt tight and stepped onto the porch. She was only wearing slippers, he noted.
“What… what are you doing here?”
Drake took a step toward the house.
“It’s cold out, Jasmine. Why don’t you head inside and get warm?”
Instead of listening, Jasmine did the opposite and took another step onto the porch. After a glance back at his car, Drake finally made up his mind and walked toward the house. When he reached Jasmine, he put an arm around her shoulder and spun her a
round, guiding her toward her open door.
She didn’t resist.
Once inside, he shut the door behind them and immediately started to warm up.
“Is… is Suzan home?” Drake asked hesitatingly.
Jasmine shook her head.
“She’s at a friend’s house, studying for an exam.”
Her response surprised him.
Suzan’s back at school? Already?
Drake knew that the girl was strong, but this was unprecedented. After what happened to her…
“You want some tea, Drake?”
What Drake wanted was to go home and sip from the bottle of Johnny Red that he had waiting for him until he passed out.
“Sure,” he replied.
Drake followed Jasmine to the kitchen, watching her as she went. She set the kettle on the stove, and then reached up to grab a mug from one of the upper cupboards. As she did, her robe lifted slightly, and Drake looked away when a bare ass cheek came into view.
He blushed.
“What were you doing out there, Drake?” Jasmine asked as she grabbed two mugs and turned back to him.
Drake stared at her for a moment, trying to figure out if she was being facetious or not. He decided not—in her sleepy state, he doubted that she could be anything but honest.
“I was… I was just passing by,” he lied; he didn’t feel up for a discussion about the envelopes, where they came from, why he left them.
Now it was Jasmine’s turn to squint at him.
She opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off by the scream of the kettle. A small smile formed on her lips, and she turned her back to him again.
Something came over Drake then. Without thinking, he moved behind her, and slipped a hand around her waist.
Pull away, he urged her. Pull away, slap me, call me a bastard and I’ll leave.
But Jasmine didn’t pull away. Instead, she shifted her hips backward ever so slightly, pressing her ass against him.
Encouraged by her movement, Drake spun Jasmine around. And then he kissed her. Softly at first, but when he felt her tongue probe his lips, he kissed her more forcefully.
He felt Jasmine’s hands wrap around his waist and pull him even closer. Drake lifted his hand from her hip and slipped it beneath the collar of her robe. His searching hand found her breast and he squeezed, feeling her nipple harden between his fingers.
Jasmine moaned, a sound that was barely audible over the kettle’s high-pitched squeal, and Drake suddenly pulled back.
He blinked rapidly, and as he did he felt light-headed.
What am I doing? This is… this is wrong.
Jasmine looked up at him, and ground her hips against the front of his pants, which had become uncomfortably tight.
She tilted her chin upward, her mouth open slightly, and a split second before he leaned down to meet her lips, something changed.
Drake was no longer staring at Jasmine Cuthbert’s pretty face, but someone else’s. Someone with short brown hair and smallish features.
He was staring at Chase Adams.
“What the—”
Jasmine suddenly yanked him forward and, eyes wide, Drake found himself kissing her again, tasting her sweet scent, feeling the moistness on her lips and down below.
What the fuck am I doing? What the fuck am I doing?
CHAPTER 21
Chase finally made it home around midnight. It was dark, it was cold, and the exhaustion that she had felt in the car with Agent Stitts had only grown in his absence.
As had the cloud of… what was it that she felt, exactly? Doubt? Discomfort?
Whatever it was, it gnawed at the lining of her stomach.
With a sigh, she exited her car and made her way toward the door. As was her habit, she tried the doorknob before inserting the key, and was surprised to find it unlocked.
Shaking her head in frustration, she knocked the snow from her boots and stepped inside.
A flicker of movement from down the hall caught her eye and her hand went to the gun on her hip.
“Chase? That you?” a groggy voice asked. Chase took a deep breath and relaxed.
“Yeah, it’s just me. Listen, Brad, you left the door open again. You have to remember to lock it.”
“Sorry, I was beat. Fed Felix dinner and then fell asleep on the couch watching the Yankees game. There’s some left, you want?”
Chase removed her coat.
“The Yankee game’s over by now. Unless they’re playing the Red Sox, then it’ll probably last until tomorrow afternoon.”
Brad tousled his short brown hair and chuckled.
“Not the game, you puffalump; I meant dinner. Made a chili-slash-stew. Pretty good, if I do say so myself. Felix thought it was too spicy, but you know how he is. Garlic is too spicy for him.”
Brad slid an arm around her waist as he spoke, and while at first Chase leaned into him, she eventually pulled away.
The thought of meat suddenly made her feel queasy.
“Thanks, but I’ll pass. Could do a beer though.”
Brad frowned, his brow furrowing.
“I’ll join you,” he said as he made his way to the fridge.
After removing her coat and boots, she flopped down on the couch. A smirk crossed her lips when she realized that not only was the TV still on, but so was the game. The Yanks were playing the Sox and it was 7-7 in the bottom of the fourteenth inning.
Chase was just getting comfortable, feeling her eyes droop, when Brad slid in beside her and handed her an ice-cold beer.
She took a large gulp, wincing as the cold stung her throat. Beer probably wasn’t the best thing for her suddenly unsettled stomach, but then again, when was beer a bad idea?
Thoughts of alcohol brought an image of Drake to mind, and she wondered briefly what he was up to at this very moment.
Probably elbows deep in a bottle of scotch, she reckoned.
Brad took a sip of his own beer then turned to face her, concern etched on his handsome face.
“You alright? You seem quiet, even for you.”
Chase stared at her bottle of beer for a moment, before taking another swig.
“It’s this case,” she admitted. “There’s something about it that… that…”
“Reminds you of your past? Of your sister?” Brad offered, his voice so quiet that the words bordered on inaudible.
Chase ground her teeth and ignored the comment.
“It’s just getting to me. I think I’m just tired, is all.”
“Ever think of taking a break? A week off maybe? I mean, we haven’t even been in New York for a year yet, and you’ve led two, and now three, major cases. Not to mention being promoted to Sergeant, and all that bullshit with Rhodes. And how can we forget about the fact that you were kidnapped. Jesus, Chase, take a break. It’ll do you good,” Brad sighed heavily and averted his eyes. “It would do us good, Chase.”
Chase’s eyes shot up.
“What? What do you mean?”
Bard picked at the label on his beer bottle.
“You know what I mean. Look, I’m not saying you didn’t warn me—you did. I knew that moving to New York would mean that you would be busy. I also knew that it was a career move, that starting as a Detective would eventually take you to the FBI, but—”
Chase opened her mouth to interrupt, but Brad continued quickly, not giving her a chance.
“But, we also know what happened in Seattle when you were overworked, how…” his eyes darted to her arms, which were thankfully covered by a dark sweater, and his sentence trailed off.
Chase hated how Brad couldn’t bring himself to say the words, as if she were so fragile that just mentioning what had happened in Seattle when she was undercover would set her off.
She wasn’t that person anymore. She was someone different, someone stronger.
Besides, there was only one thing that she refused to talk about, and he had already broached that subject, if only in passing.
So why
is this case getting to you, then? A nagging voice inside her head demanded.
“Well, you know,” he said at last.
Chase’s eyes narrowed.
“Say it. Say it, Brad.”
He shook his head.
“No, I’m not going to say it. It’ll do no good to say it—I just—I just think it’s important to let you know that Felix misses you, that I miss you.”
Brad looked down as he said this, making it clear that it wasn’t intended as a guilt trip. It was just him being honest, which was admirable. And Chase couldn’t help but think that she was probably working too hard.
Even poker was failing at taking her mind off her work, which was the main reason why she played.
An image of Melissa Green, her face barely peeking out from beneath a thatchwork of hay, her lips a crusty brown, flashed in her mind.
“After this case, Brad. After this case, I’ll take some time off,” Chase thought of Beckett and his vacation in the Virgin Gorda. “We can go away somewhere, maybe. Somewhere hot.”
She smiled, and while Brad returned the gesture, it also somehow seemed sad.
He patted her knee gently, then stood.
“Come to bed soon, Chase,” he said, finishing his beer. “You look tired.”
“I will,” Chase lied. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
CHAPTER 22
“I can help you with those.”
The woman looked over and offered a tentative smile.
“No, that’s okay. I can manage.”
“You sure? They look heavy.”
The woman glanced down at the bags, one in each hand, both bursting at the seams with books. They were heavy.
“Sure, my car is just over there,” she said, indicating a gold minivan a couple of spots over.
She sighed as she relinquished her hold on one of the bags.
“Normally I have my son here to help me, but he’s… well, he needs extra help and stayed late at school. Grade four, and already they’re trying to tell me that he’s falling behind in algebra. Algebra! I mean, I don’t know about you, but I didn’t take algebra until at least high school,” she chuckled dryly. “And even then, I’m not sure I had any idea how to solve the damn—excuse me, darn—equations. I mean, letters and numbers are like liquor and beer. They just shouldn’t mix, if you know what I mean.”
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