The Scarlett Bell FBI Series

by Dan Padavona

  Hayward grinned. Scarlett Bell was closing in on Logan Wolf…or was Wolf closing in on Bell?…and when she captured him Hayward intended to be there. The elite press corps wouldn’t be able to deny him any longer. He could sell his story to the highest bidder, leave the rat race, and purchase a small island somewhere. Hell, he might buy The Informer. Logan Wolf’s capture would be the crime story of the century.

  Bell stood and slipped on a pair of sunglasses. The wind whipped her blonde hair around, stressing her beauty. Hayward zoomed back and discovered an interesting composition—the sidewalk darting into the horizon and rimmed by lush flora and palms, Scarlett Bell peering into the distance as though the murderer’s identity lay on the wind. The perfect picture for his next spread. A sports car passed through the picture, and a man biked along the curb. He didn’t mind. These elements drew readers into the picture.

  Hayward panned the lens and saw Bell staring at him. Dammit, she’d spotted him.

  Though he broke no laws and had every right to be there, he turned the ignition and checked his mirrors. No cars coming. The officers walked in his direction.

  When he looked through the viewfinder, Bell raised her middle finger at him.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWO

  Gardy grabbed hold of Bell and kept her from running after Hayward.

  “He’s not doing anything illegal.”

  She stopped fighting, not because she couldn’t break free but because Hayward’s CRV was halfway to the end of the block and drifting out of sight.

  “The man’s a menace and should be shot on sight.”

  Officer Haggleston spoke into his radio. Great. Wait until Detective Phalen hears Hayward photographed the investigation. When Haggleston held the radio out for Bell, she knew Phalen was angry.

  “For you.”

  “Wonderful. I’ll take a walk.”

  Bell wandered to a palm and pressed her back against the trunk. The others watched her, Gardy faking interest in the hedges. She put on a sarcastic smile as if Phalen could see her through the radio.

  “Hayward is turning into a bigger problem. What are you going to do about this, Agent Bell?”

  “He’s within his rights provided he photographs from the street, and as you found out last night, he’ll walk on a simple trespassing charge.”

  She imagined the detective’s hands balled into fists, face red.

  “Any idea how he found you?”

  “The media know the murder sites, so it’s no surprise he’s scoping out the neighborhoods and waiting for us to arrive.”

  “Waiting for you to arrive and perform your profiling voodoo.”

  “My apologies, detective, but that’s not fair.”

  He sighed through the speaker.

  “No, it’s not. But we can handle the evidence gathering with our own men without attracting Hayward’s attention. We don’t need the BAU. Your presence is only exasperating the—”

  “That’s for you and the chief to debate.”

  She heard him shuffle papers on his desk as he brought his temper under control.

  “So tell me about the shoe print.”

  “It’s a running sneaker. Officer Adames identified it as a Nike Free Flyknit.”

  “Doss was a runner.”

  “And we have a witness who claims Doss was in front of Tannehill’s house on the evening of the murder.”

  “Dammit, it has to be the boyfriend. I’m bringing him in.”

  Bell glanced over her shoulder. Gardy was holding court with the officers. A man walked his dog on the other side of the street.

  “Okay. It’s hard to argue with the evidence.”

  “Yet that’s what you’re doing. You don’t think Doss killed her.”

  She didn’t. Bell bit her tongue. The last thing she wanted to do was further alienate Phalen.

  “I don’t know. His build fits the profile, and one witness places him at the scene, though her testimony won’t stand up in court. I doubt she can see past her mailbox, let alone identify Doss inside a dark car from fifty feet away.”

  He clicked a pen repeatedly.

  “That’s a problem.”

  “Listen, whether it’s the boyfriend or someone else, the killer can’t control his compulsion to revisit the kill scenes. He only lasted one day before he returned to Tannehill’s, and I’d bet good money he’s been to Morris’s home multiple times.”

  “Shit.”

  “But that’s how we’ll catch him. Stake out the houses. Put one crew on Morris’s home and another on Tannehill’s.”

  “Yes, that makes sense. I’ll set it up with the chief now.”

  “And Detective Phalen?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I want to be part of the team watching Tannehill’s house. He’ll come back tonight.”

  “Okay, Agent Bell. I’ll work out the logistics and get back to you.”

  “Let’s talk at the office. We’re coming in as soon as we wrap up the scene.”

  Phalen agreed.

  But when they arrived at the station, the police had a suspect in custody.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THREE

  Reporters and a slew of uniformed officers trying to hold them back crowded the front entrance to the Palm Dunes Police Department. Someone lowered a shoulder into Bell as she and Gardy waded through the crowd. A female reporter with enormous, shiny teeth and a sanctimonious smile recognized Bell and shouted questions targeting Logan Wolf and the serial killers they’d captured in recent months.

  Holding his ID badge aloft, Gardy guided Bell to the front doors, where a young, alarmed officer put his hand up to stop them before he recognized the agents. Then they shoved through the doors and into the bright lobby, the reporters’ shouts muffled by the windows. Gardy turned back to the officer and grabbed his arm.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “The killer is in lockup. They’re starting the interrogation soon.”

  “What do you mean the killer is in lockup? I spoke with Detective Phalen an hour ago.”

  Bell and Gardy had stopped for lunch on the way into the office and hadn’t heard from the Palm Dunes Police Department.

  “Didn’t he contact you?”

  “No.”

  Gardy huffed and pushed on, Bell right behind him as he took the stairs two-at-a-time. Phalen stood talking to a female officer with dark hair at the end of the hall. He held a clipboard and an iPad as he nodded at her questions. When Phalen glanced up and saw them coming, he touched her arm and shared a look, and she disappeared into an office and closed the door.

  “Agents Gardy and Bell.”

  “Save the salutations, Jay. You caught the killer and didn’t bother to notify us?”

  Gardy was a second from throwing the detective against the wall. Bell considered intervening and decided Phalen deserved what was coming to him.

  Phalen held up his hands.

  “Slow down. It’s not how you think.”

  “Then illuminate me.”

  “We didn’t catch him. The bastard walked right through the front door and confessed the murders to the officer manning the front desk. This all happened less than an hour ago.”

  Gardy caught Bell’s eye. The unknown subject was confident, brazen. He wouldn’t succumb to guilt and confess.

  “Every reporter in the city knows, Jay. You could have radioed me.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry. It wasn’t me that leaked the arrest to the press. I haven’t had a second to breathe, and now we’re setting up for interrogation. Come on. Walk with me.”

  Phalen talked over his shoulder as they descended the stairs and returned to the lobby.

  “The perp’s name is Randall McVay, twenty-six-years-old, Palm Dunes resident.”

  Turning down a hallway, Bell raised her voice above the clamor.

  “Detective Phalen, we’re looking for a young, athletic male, good looking and upscale. A confident risk taker.”

  “No offense, agent, but we’re past the point of ne
eding a profile.”

  “At least tell me McVay is a strong guy. You saw the stab wounds.”

  Phalen stopped at the door and exhaled.

  “Strong enough. Now if you’ll excuse me..”

  “Wait. Aren’t you going to allow us to take part in the interrogation?”

  “What’s the need? McVay will sign the confession and that will be that. Cheer up, Agent Bell. Your theory about the boyfriend being innocent was correct. See you after the interview.”

  The door closed. Phalen was a desperate man and needed to close this case despite evidence contrary to the supposed confession. You could sway your mind to ignore a house’s creaks as signs of a crumbling foundation, but eventually the structure collapsed.

  Bell stared icepicks into Gardy.

  “Don’t blame me,” he said. “I want to be in there as much as you.”

  “So make it happen, Gardy. What on earth are we doing in Florida? Phalen has shut us out from the minute we arrived.”

  “Agents Bell and Gardy?” They turned and saw a graying man in a suit approach. He spoke into his cell phone and slipped it into his pocket. “Lee Rimmer, Chief of Police.”

  He slipped a folder beneath his arm and shook their hands.

  “Sorry it took so long to cross paths. I’ve been up to my eyeballs in cases. We were due a lucky break. Hell of a thing, the killer confessing, but I’m happy you agreed to help us.”

  “Not much we contributed, to be honest,” said Gardy, glancing sidelong at the closed door. Bell felt the same anxiousness to get inside the interrogation room.

  “Not true. The fingerprint in the attic, the sneaker print across the street. Crucial pieces of evidence. Say, aren’t you participating in the interrogation?”

  Gardy opened his mouth, and Bell jumped in.

  “We’re no longer in the loop.”

  “Nonsense, Agent Bell. The entire department owes you a debt of gratitude for lending your expertise. We value your opinion.”

  “I’m sorry to say this, sir, but Detective Phalen stated we weren’t to be part of the interrogation.”

  Gardy rolled his eyes and fell back against the wall.

  Rimmer tilted his head toward Bell the way someone does when they’re certain they misheard.

  “That doesn’t sound like Detective Phalen…” Rimmer trailed off, locked in thought. Then his face altered, the look a disappointed parent saves for a misbehaving child. “Wait here.”

  Rimmer stepped inside the room and shut the door. It was impossible to eavesdrop on the conversation, but Bell heard raised voices.

  “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  Bell looked up at Gardy.

  “There wasn’t any other way. Phalen left us no choice.”

  “Bell, you can’t throw people under the bus. What happens when word gets around that Agents Gardy and Bell go over detectives’ heads when they don’t get what they want? We’ll end up with uncooperative law enforcement everywhere we go.”

  “And that is different how? Sheriff Lowe in Kansas, Lerner in New York. They stood in our way and stabbed us in the back. Now we’re having a pissing contest with a jealous detective who couldn’t—”

  “Don’t say it.”

  “Who couldn’t make it with the BAU. He wasn’t good enough, Gardy. And you know why he failed? It wasn’t because he didn’t have the skill. He’s power hungry, more interested in garnering the spotlight than closing cases, and he’s about to convict an innocent man. McVay’s fingerprint won’t match the one they took out of the attic.”

  “But he confessed—”

  The door opening stopped Gardy’s retort. Chief Rimmer eyed them both, considering. Then he held the door for them.

  “The Palm Dunes Police Department requests the BAU’s expertise during this interrogation.”

  “Thank you, Chief,” said Gardy. “Bell?”

  Bell followed Gardy inside, and Rimmer closed the door behind them. Phalen wore a tight-lipped smile.

  “Now that everyone is here, we’ll continue.”

  Gardy and Bell took seats across the table from Randall McVay, a gangly, disheveled looking man whose eyes refused to rest. McVay wore torn blue jeans and a red t-shirt with a skull on the front. Red pinpricks marked his arms. Drug use? He swung his gaze between the two agents and Chief Rimmer, who sat on the other side of Gardy, and to Detective Phalen at the end of the table.

  “Detective Phalen,” Rimmer said, shooting the detective a glare of warning. “Please bring the FBI up to speed on this afternoon’s developments.”

  Phalen recounted McVay’s arrival and confession, then gave the grim and gory details of the two murders as described by McVay.

  During this, McVay kept moving his eyes to the table whenever Bell looked in his direction. The young man looked intimidated. Afraid.

  Phalen clicked the papers together and set them on the tabletop.

  “Since we’re on the same page, does the FBI have questions for Mr McVay?”

  Gardy nodded at Bell, who flipped the notepad open to a blank page and clicked her pen. She looked across the table at McVay. The man shifted in his seat.

  “Mr McVay, may I call you Randall?” He nodded. Bell softened her eyes and held her gaze. “Good. Randall, tell me about December 20, the night you murdered Cheryl Morris.”

  Something clicked in McVay’s throat. He swallowed, and Phalen poured water into a plastic cup and handed it to McVay. McVay took a long sip.

  “I told the detective. I got off work at five and drove to her house.”

  “To Cheryl Morris’s house.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you park in front?”

  “No, I parked down the street so no one would notice my car. I had to wait a long time, at least an hour before it got dark.”

  “And how did you meet Cheryl Morris?”

  McVay shrugged.

  “I just seen her around is all.”

  “So you didn’t know her.”

  “No.”

  “Where did you see Cheryl Morris first?”

  The man turned silent for a moment, his lips moving as he considered his answer.

  “Downtown at a club. The Sunset Grill, I think. Yeah, it was there.”

  “And how did you learn Morris’s identity?”

  “I f—followed her home and copied the address, then I looked it up on the Internet.”

  Bell scribbled McVay’s answers and set the pen on the table.

  “So back to the night of December 20. How did you break inside Morris’s home? Were the doors locked?”

  McVay glanced around the table. Chief Rimmer’s chin rested on his palm, eyes squinted in thought. Phalen rocked back in his chair.

  “Sure. I mean, I think so.”

  “You don’t remember if the door was locked when you turned the handle?”

  Bell fought not to bite her lip. The killer used a glass cutter on the sliding glass door behind the house.

  “I think it was unlocked…no, wait. It was locked, so I sneaked around the back of the house and came in through the patio door.”

  “Was the patio door unlocked?”

  “No, I used a glass cutter.”

  Bell cursed inside. Phalen wore a smug grin.

  “Then what did you do?”

  As Bell copied McVay’s admissions, the man told them he stalked Morris from room-to-room before he attacked. Again, McVay seemed too cautious and unsure of himself. Not how she envisioned the real killer. True, McVay claimed he cut through the sliding glass door, but that detail made the news and counted as public knowledge.

  “We can go over the Tannehill murder if it pleases the agents,” Phalen said, drumming his fingers on the desk. “But Mr McVay answered our questions.”

  “Just a few more minutes,” said Bell.

  Phalen looked imploringly at Rimmer. The chief shook his head.

  Bell shut the notepad and clicked off the pen.

  “As I’m certain you can appreciate, Randall, we didn‘
t release all the details of the murders due to the…insensitive nature of the attack.”

  McVay reached for the water. The cup jiggled in his hands.

  “Of course.”

  “Can you describe how you murdered Cheryl Morris?”

  “I st—stabbed her.”

  “Stabbed her where?”

  “In the chest.”

  Bell’s heart quickened as her confidence faded.

  “Which killed her.”

  “Yes.”

  Fighting not to drop McVay’s gaze, she rolled the dice. Went for broke.

  “Help me understand what you did next. For the record. And so we may learn from you.”

  “Will you tell the news?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The news. You’ll tell them, won’t you?”

  “Only if you want me to. Shall I?”

  “Yes.”

  “After you murdered Cheryl Morris, you used knives to spike her wrists above her head, then you proceeded to have sexual intercourse with her.” McVay stared at the table again, took another long sip of water. “Randall, look at me. I realize details of the murder may embarrass you if I recount them in front of the officers, but I need to understand your actions. Are my facts correct?”

  McVay lifted his eyes.

  “Yes.”

  Phalen tossed his pen on the table and buried his face in his hands. Rimmer looked like he wanted to throw up as Gardy worked to suppress a grin.

  “Did you do the same to Lori Tannehill on the night of January 6? Spiked her wrists and raped her after the murder?”

  “Yes…yes, I did. I couldn’t help myself.”

  Rimmer took the folder from Phalen and snapped it shut.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED FOUR

  Detective Phalen didn’t utter a word on his way out of the interrogation room, just peered straight ahead as he marched toward the stairs.

  “Good call on McVay, but you should have handled the argument more tactfully,” Gardy said, his stare following Phalen.

  “If I didn’t speak up, an innocent man would have taken the fall.”

  “The way you treated Jay was unwarranted.”