Variable Onset

by Layla Reyne

  “Why did Dr. Fear escalate?”

  Or not. The disappointment hammer struck again, but Lincoln’s question was a valid one, the primary thing Carter should have been thinking about. Not how he’d warm up Lincoln’s lips with his. He gave his head a single, hard shake, forcing it and himself back into the case. “Because their cycle was hijacked.”

  Lincoln tilted his head. “Why the notes to us? Why stay in Apex? Why not resume in DC?”

  “You don’t think this is Dr. Fear? You think it’s another copycat?”

  “Oh, no, I think this is Dr. Fear. I’m just trying to understand why they’re changing things up.”

  “The copycat was a new trigger,” Carter speculated.

  “Yes and no. There was a trigger before Baxter; Baxter just caused the escalation. Whatever set off this latest cycle, something about it feels different.” Lincoln’s eyes strayed over Carter’s shoulder again. Carter rotated, following Lincoln’s line of sight to the patio door and the fingerprint dust outline there of the note. “I think maybe they mean for this to be their last.”

  Lincoln’s words, the outline of the note, the significance of its location, their involvement all crystallized for Carter. He understood what Lincoln was driving at. “They mean to escape this time. For good.”

  * * *

  Interrogating Weathers was largely a bust. Other than recognizing his distorted voice, Clyde didn’t recognize anything else about Baxter—and he had no idea whether Stacy knew Baxter either. Aside from Stacy being an addict, Weathers had given them nothing more to solidify their theory that Baxter had used the drugs to lure Stacy to the motel. Speculation, and from there, nothing but question marks. Stacy sure as fuck wasn’t talking, and Baxter still wasn’t talking either.

  Carter was two seconds from tearing apart the office adjacent to the makeshift command center, frustration at the boiling point, when the door swung open.

  “We may have something,” Drake announced, as he stepped into the room. Then immediately stepped back.

  Carter must have looked like he was on edge. Taking a deep breath, he walked behind the desk and waved Drake inside.

  Drake hesitated a moment longer, then finally entered. He laid three sheets of paper on the desk and pushed the first one toward Carter. “Property record for several acres Baxter owns just outside of Apex.” He nudged the middle sheet—an aerial photo with dotted lot lines, a large red circle, and a pin-drop inside the circle. Drake tapped the pin-drop. “Baxter’s place.” Then he tapped the circle’s edge. “The DEA’s designated hot zone for meth production in the area.”

  Baxter was smack dab inside it. “Easy pickings for someone who needed to practice disappearing and murdering people.”

  “I think he did.” Drake pushed the last sheet of paper toward Carter. “This graph extrapolates the data from the missing person’s report. This blue line is the rate at which we should be seeing missing persons reports, based on the DEA’s estimates of the growing meth epidemic. This red line shows a similarly steady increase in APD’s missing persons reports until this shelf spike here. It’s been above average since.”

  Carter checked the date at the bottom of the graph that corresponded to the spike. “2009.” Jeff Baxter’s last year at Apex U. A year after Dr. Fear’s last cycle, after he’d found out who Dr. Fear was and began transforming himself into a killer too. Fucking hell. “Get out there,” he told Drake. “Get out there and see if he buried any bodies on or near the property.”

  The younger agent rushed out, rallying the team. “Good work, Agent Drake!” Carter shouted after him. He shot off a text to Beverley and Kirk, requesting a video chat. As Carter waited for the response bubbles to materialize into words, O’Shea poked his head in the room. “You need me?” he asked. “If not, I’m going to go with Drake.”

  “Go.” Carter stacked the sheets and situated himself behind the laptop. “I’m going to see if this is enough to make Baxter talk.”

  “Good luck.”

  O’Shea shut the door, just as the call from Beverley dinged. Carter accepted, and the director appeared on-screen, in a different suit from this morning and with even deeper bags under his eyes. Little sleep on their end either. “What’ve you got, Agent Warren?”

  “Another missing couple.”

  “Dr. Fear?” Kirk said, somewhere off camera, as Beverley replied, “Your text said this was about Baxter.”

  “It’s about both,” Carter replied.

  “Explain,” Kirk said, appearing beside Beverley.

  “The missing couple is Barry and Trudy Cousins, the former police chief and his wife. No one thought their absence unusual at first. They have a tendency to travel spontaneously, but when Barry’s brother, the current chief, checked out their place, there were signs of a struggle. And a diagnosis, from Dr. Fear.”

  “Fuck,” Kirk cursed. “They’re back.”

  “They never left,” Carter said. “They’re finishing their cycle. Which is why it’s more important than ever that we get Baxter to talk, and I think I have the evidence to do that.”

  Carter walked them through Drake’s findings, each man looking paler and more tired with every piece of evidence Carter presented.

  Kirk wiped a hand down his weary face. “Let us go back with this. Maybe it’s enough for a deal.”

  “No.” Carter stood and braced his hands on the desk, looming over the laptop. “If O’Shea and Drake find bodies out there, this guy is probably going away for multiple life sentences. No deal is going to change that, and he’ll know that. But I can bait him.”

  “Agent Warren,” Beverley said, a note of warning in his voice.

  “I want to be the one, sir. I’m the one here in Apex. I’m the one on the clock now, trying to save a couple who’s important to the town here.” And to him. He liked Barry and Trudy and would do his damnedest to save them.

  Kirk nodded. “He helped rescue my daughter, Bev. Give him what he wants. He and L have got the best shot at this now.”

  Beverley seemed less convinced, but he conceded, telling Carter to hold while they retrieved Baxter. Fifteen agonizing minutes later, the screen flickered to life again, now broadcasting an interrogation room. Baxter was handcuffed to the table and a suited man—attorney, Carter assumed—sat beside him.

  “What’s going on?” the suit asked, glancing between Carter on the screen and Beverley and Kirk across the table from them.

  “This is Agent Carter Warren,” Beverley said. “He’s on the ground in Apex. Agent Warren, Attorney Ford and Jeff Baxter.”

  “My client isn’t talking.”

  “That’s fine,” Carter said. “I’ll talk. We found your property outside of Apex, Mr. Baxter. Located right in the middle of a meth hot spot. We have agents headed there now. I wonder what they’ll find there. How much practice did it take to transform yourself into your favorite serial killer? How many times did you try to impress your idol, and they still rejected you?”

  Baxter lunged at the bait. “He didn’t reject me,” he snarled. “He rejected himself.”

  He. Confirmed by Baxter himself. Carter struck Lydia off the list for good. “Who is he?”

  “Jeff,” the attorney chided.

  Carter tossed out more bait, leading Baxter after the hook. “You’re one to talk, dyeing your hair gray to look like him, pretending to have the same MO as him.”

  Baxter scoffed.

  “How many times did you mimic Dr. Fear before you actively interfered? Before you stole from him? Before you aimed too high and went after Senator Kirk’s kid?”

  And hooked. “You can’t steal something that someone is willing to give away.”

  “And you can’t get away with mimicking a killer you don’t understand. It’s not about taking for Dr. Fear. It’s about getting the fuck out of this place.”

  Baxter smiled, maniacal and unhinged, and
chomped at the boat Carter was steering. “Exactly.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  A giant thermos of coffee and a bag of what smelled like apple cinnamon muffins landed on the table next to Lincoln. Whiffs of Ivory soap and leather followed, and Lincoln smiled—at the special deliveries and at the man who’d delivered them. “I take back every evil thought I ever had about you.”

  “That many, huh?” Carter said, removing his coat.

  Lincoln held up his hand, thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Just a few.”

  “I feel like this—” Carter spread his arms wide “—is closer to the truth.”

  “You said it.” Lincoln removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. How else was be supposed to avoid ogling all those muscles encased in today’s green Henley?

  Chuckling, Carter claimed the chair next to him. “When I left you here last night, you said you were right behind me. I would have panicked if I hadn’t fallen asleep at the kitchen table.”

  “I left you a voicemail not to wait up.”

  “Which I listened to this morning, when I woke up with a crick in my neck from sleeping at the kitchen table.” Eyes closed, Carter stretched his torso and neck, this way and that.

  Lincoln could no longer avoid ogling—the corded muscles of Carter’s throat on display, as was the hickey Lincoln had left there yesterday, exposed by Carter’s shifting collar. Fire crept up Lincoln’s neck while the rest of his blood raced south, his dick hardening at the memory of their kiss in the elevator and how Carter’s skin had tickled his tongue and taste buds. It had been the only heated moment yesterday, besides the almost moment at Barry and Trudy’s place. They’d both lost themselves in work, but here, now, Lincoln wished they could replay that minute in the elevator, wished he could act on the still churning sensations and desires the not-so-insufferable Carter Warren had reawakened.

  “What kept you here?”

  Lincoln’s eyes shot up to Carter’s knowing green ones. “A complete lack of nothing,” Lincoln said. A truth or a lie, depending on Carter’s question, which hadn’t been specific.

  “This—” Carter spread his hands “—does not look like nothing.”

  In reference to work, then—safer for all concerned. “Based on what you learned from Baxter,” he said, “I officially eliminated Lydia.” He pointed at the largest stack of photos on the table to their right. “She, unfortunately, was our most photo-friendly suspect.” He pointed at the other stack on that table. “Second most photo-friendly is Jeremiah. I’ve officially eliminated him too. Hold a second before you object.” He rolled over to that table and grabbed the postcard he’d flagged with a Post-It. “Besides the fact that he’s too young, I confirmed that he was in Vegas at the time of Zia’s and Quinn’s deaths. Bachelor party for a friend. He sent this postcard to Molly. She had pictures from him, in Vegas, on her phone too.”

  “Probably why he’s been extra snippy with our newlywed routine.”

  Routine? Was that all it was? Had the kiss yesterday meant nothing to Carter? Was the hickey on his neck just an embarrassing reminder? Or did he notice it at all?

  “L?” Carter said with a gentle squeeze of his shoulder.

  Lincoln cleared his throat—and confusing thoughts—and picked up where he’d left off. “I also think Jeremiah genuinely loves it here in Apex, lack of a dating scene notwithstanding. He even bought a house here last year. Confirmed it in the records.” He nodded toward the Jeremiah pile again.

  “What about not disclosing he was a junior transfer to UVA?”

  He’d asked Molly about that too. “They interviewed a candidate before me who was rather elitist about what he considered adequate qualifications to handle the archives here.”

  “Ah, so Jeremiah was hedging his bets with you.”

  “Likely. With a new house to pay for, he probably just wanted to keep his job.”

  “Okay,” Carter said, “I agree with you on Jeremiah. He’s in the clear.” He tossed the postcard onto the other table. “That leaves us with Barry and Larry.”

  Lincoln laid a hand on each of the two stacks on the table in front of them. “There are plenty of photos of those two. They’ve been in the town spotlight all their lives. Molly helped me pull some of these.”

  “I’m sensing a ‘but.’”

  “But there are none with Jeff Baxter. No town events, no Apex U events—Larry didn’t even go here, he went to George Mason—and nothing to do with the physics department or the space nerds.”

  “Back up,” Carter said. “Larry went to George Mason? That could explain his familiarity with DC, and we can tie him to each of the first cycle victims when they’re at the hospital here in Apex.”

  “Maybe, if we assume APD followed up on each incident. There’s only a police report for two of them, Zia and Glen Morrow. Anthony’s flat didn’t involve anyone else and the guard rail damage was minimal, so no report. And no report was filed for Susan either. We only found that mentioned in the dispatch call logs.”

  Glen Morrow, a long-haul trucker, was Dr. Fear’s first victim in his cycle twelve years ago, the one Lincoln had worked on with Ollie. Glen feared choking to death after almost doing so on a gumball when he was thirteen; he died choking on a ball gag. But before that, he’d landed in the county hospital after getting into an altercation with an unidentified student at the all-night diner on the interstate.

  Susan Turner was Dr. Fear’s first victim in his cycle from twenty years ago, one of the subjects of Lincoln’s thesis. Fear of animals; her body was found mangled in the lion’s den at the National Zoo. She’d come down with food poisoning on the drive from Knoxville, where she was in school at the University of Tennessee, to Fairfax, where she lived. Just outside of Apex, she’d had to pull over on the side of the road, and passersby had called it in as a possible drunk driver. They took her to the hospital, gave her an IV, and she left in the morning, the unknowing target of Dr. Fear.

  “But,” Carter said, “it stands to reason that Larry would have known about, and may have been at, all or any of those scenes or follow-up visits at the hospital. It’s circumstantial but all here. Larry is our best suspect.”

  “Except we don’t have anything directly tying him to the victims or to Baxter.”

  “All those missing persons reports he ignored? ERT unearthed a body overnight; more are expected.”

  Lincoln shivered. One serial killer had indeed become two, and the more they learned about the second, the more disturbing he became. But Baxter was in custody. Dr. Fear was at large still and with two potential victims. And if Larry was Dr. Fear, those victims were family. Lincoln couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t imagine doing harm like that to Trina. “His own brother and sister-in-law...”

  “Maybe Barry figured it out,” Carter speculated. “Maybe it wasn’t only about jealousy. Barry wouldn’t let up questioning us. You think he went any easier on his brother?”

  “Of course not. He probably went even harder.”

  “Like he’d been doing his entire life.”

  Lincoln raked a hand through his hair. He couldn’t ignore it made sense, but something still felt off. “Okay, say you’re right, what triggered this latest cycle?” He drummed his fingers along the edge of the timeline graphs he’d retrieved and updated last night. “Twelve years, Carter. Twelve years during which he became the police chief, became even more tied to this town, and that didn’t set him off.”

  Carter looked as frustrated as Lincoln felt, until something registered, something that made the lines around his eyes and mouth smooth out, that lifted his brow with understanding. He shuffled through the photos of Larry and Barry. He drew one out and slid it in front of Lincoln. Except it wasn’t a photo of just two brothers; it was three. “His oldest brother’s death. That’s the trigger.”

  “Harry died months before Zia passed through here.”

 
“Given Larry’s responsibilities as chief, it probably took him longer to get out of here.”

  “And the others? Glen, Susan, and Anthony? Larry wasn’t chief then.”

  Carter shoved back his chair and stood. “Christ, I don’t know!”

  Surprised by the sudden blast of anger, Lincoln rocked back in his chair, balancing on the back two legs.

  Carter’s face fell, the anger rushing out as fast as it’d come. “Shit, L, I’m sorry.” He clasped Lincoln’s shoulder and steadied him on the way back down to all four chair legs. “I shouldn’t have blown up at you like that.”

  Lincoln reached up and covered his hand. “Hey, babe, it’s okay, we’re both just tired and stretched thin.”

  Carter’s eyes jumped from their hands to Lincoln’s face, and the soft, genuine smile Lincoln liked so much graced his handsome features. The babe slip was totally worth it. And frighteningly easy. Lincoln didn’t have time to dwell on it, though, with Carter running through case theories again as he reclaimed his seat.

  “I just keep thinking about Barry and Trudy, and what their murders would do to this town, and what happens when the press gets ahold of this. Our clock is ticking down.” He scrubbed his hands over his face and into his hair. “I keep coming back to something Baxter said. ‘He didn’t reject me, he rejected himself.’”

  Lincoln slid the thermos and a muffin in front of him. “And you think that’s about Larry becoming chief?”

  Carter ripped off the muffin top and shoved it into his mouth. He chewed and washed it down with a swig of the coffee. “He had a way out, and he didn’t take it. He became the chief instead, tying himself here.”

  “I’ll take a look back through Larry’s photos. Search for signs of distress or triggers. We can call the team at the hospital too and see if they can get hospital logs or security tape from the dates the victims passed through. See if Larry’s on there.”

  Carter shot to his feet again and yanked his coat off the back of the chair. “I have a better idea.”