“Thanks. We’ll head there now. Do you have anything else?” he asked. “Nothing past what I found at the priestess’s house.”
Ethan wasn’t really listening. He was sliding the paper toward Callen. “Thanks for the call, Detective. We’ll let you know what we find.”
He hung up.
They had to make a choice.
Bother Elizabeth or let her work through the case. Once she got into her groove, it was always a bad idea to distract her. She’d already been dealing with that as of late.
“What do you want to do?” Callen asked.
Ethan had to figure out if this would be construed as him taking over, or just having her back.
“She won’t be pissed about this. She’s working on the killer’s next move,” Callen offered.
He hoped his brother was right.
“We can go do the interview and Chris can watch her. Maybe he can pick up dinner, and if she needs us, we can be back here fast,” Callen offered.
Chris had been watching the three of them. Elizabeth was distracted, and the two men were pacing too. They definitely had much harder jobs than he did. All Chris really had to worry about was finding what killed a person, and he had all the facts once tox and trace came back.
“I don’t mind doing that,” he offered. “I’ll babysit Elizabeth.”
Blackhawk laughed. “You’re lucky she’s not paying attention, or she’d kick your ass.”
“She is paying attention,” Elizabeth stated. “I’m a mother. I can multitask. What was up with the call?”
They told her.
“Can you handle it? I feel off balance about all this. I missed something. I know I did. I really want to go back over everything I have to figure out what is making my gut scream.”
“We can, baby.”
He headed toward her and gave her a kiss.
She punched him. “Share that with Chris for his comment,” Elizabeth offered.
Callen laughed. “I love a vicious woman.”
“Be safe,” she stated.
The men headed out.
“Do you want me to order dinner?” he asked, noticing she was out of the trance. It was now or never.
“Yeah, get me the usual, and while they make it, you should call Wyler and check on Bethe.”
He grinned. “I was thinking that.”
Now, if only she could figure out what the hell was wrong with their evidence. By now, it would click into place.
Something was way off the mark.
But what?
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
Otis Short’s
Home
When they arrived, Ethan and Callen were wearing full riot gear. They didn’t want to risk anything. If this was Otis Short offing people, for whatever reason, they didn’t want to go home in a body bag.
They had kids and a family to get home to when this crazy case was over.
As they pulled up to the man’s house in the bad section of ‘The Quarter’, they took a second to check it out.
The light was on inside, but the blinds were drawn.
“I ran the address through the IRS to see if it pulled anyone claiming it as a residence on their taxes, but nothing popped. Are we sure this is his place?”
“This is the address the detective gave us.”
Well, it looked like they were about to find out.
“Good call on running it though,” Ethan offered.
“I like to be thorough. Plus, you never know what will turn up. Apparently, the oldest profession in the world is off the books.”
Ethan laughed. “You mean hookers and pimps don’t pay taxes?” he teased.
“That would be damn funny if they did. I wonder if Miss Kitty would claim them.”
Yes, he was thinking about his girl. It was hard not to.
Ethan was too.
“How does it feel to be her partner full-time?” Ethan asked, dropping his badge over his head.
Callen knew his brother missed this part.
“It’s good, but mostly I’m here to be her sexy Native armor.”
Blackhawk was well aware his brother was downplaying it. Callen had been a liaison and only got to work with Elizabeth sometimes. Now, he’d be in the field with her all the time.
He was a little jealous.
That was his favorite part of being a Fed. Before her, no one clicked with him. She did immediately.
“You can always give up your position,” Callen offered. “You can work in the field with us all the time.”
Yeah, he was aware.
“If I didn’t think that I was meant to run the FBI one day, I would. I really think this is my destiny.”
Callen patted him on the back. “It is.”
IT was time.
“Come on, bro. Let’s bitch slap some pimp to get to the bottom of this.”
Ethan snorted. “You don’t have to enjoy it so much.”
Oh, he really did.
As they approached the house, both men were ready. On the porch, Ethan was about to knock when he smelled it. Glancing down, he saw the red stain leaking from beneath the door. The blood was still bright red in the porch light.
“Psst,” he said, pointing down as he grabbed his gun.
Both men took their positions on either side of the oozing puddle. When Ethan stared over at his brother, he mouthed one thing.
‘Don’t get hurt.’
Callen actually rolled his eyes.
On the count of three, Ethan did the deed.
“Otis Short, FBI! We’re coming in!”
He booted the door.
They didn’t even have to enter the home. Lying on the floor, his stomach cut open, was the pimp.
Someone had beaten them to it.
Callen avoided the blood to crouch down beside the man’s body. Carefully, not to destroy trace, he touched his neck, searching for a pulse.
“He’s gone, but he’s still warm.”
“The killer is cleaning up. He didn’t want us to talk to this man.”
Callen agreed. “This is going to piss her off. Had we gotten to him yesterday…”
Yeah, he was well aware.
“Call in the team. We’ll add him to the body count.”
“Do you want me to bring in Chris?” Callen asked.
Ethan thought about it. “No, call in Doctor Perette. Chris is beat, and he’s on guard duty.”
As his brother dialed the phone, he was thinking about two things.
He hoped his wife wouldn’t see it as him overstepping his boundaries.
And that they needed to catch this guy, and fast.
Apparently, the killer didn’t just want hookers. He wanted anyone who could give him up.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
Ninety Minutes Later
When her phone kept chiming with reports coming in, Elizabeth had to do something she never did.
She shut it off.
For now, she had the place to herself, and she was using it. Chris had left a while ago to pick up their dinner and a few souvenirs for his daughter.
Honestly, she liked the silence.
The man was chatty. Normally, she could block it out, but this case needed her full attention.
Just as she was studying the board and the information, there was a knock on the door.
Jesus!
What did a girl have to do to get some peace? Who did she have to kill?
She was going to strangle whoever was at the door for interrupting her. She was getting closer, she could tell.
When she pulled the door open, there stood the detective. He was holding a brown paper sack.
“Detective Le Bleu, what can I do for you?”
“I was about to hit ‘The Quarter’, but your husband mentioned you were going to be here working. I thought I’d bring you a sandwich from the shop by my house.”
She smiled.
He was just trying to be nice.
“Come
on in! I was getting dinner, but my food seems to have been held up.”
He headed in.
“Where is everyone?” he asked.
“My ME is out shopping and my husbands are probably kicking the hell out of Otis Short,” she said, leading him to the sitting area.
“Oh, didn’t you hear?” he asked.
“No, I turned off my phone to work.”
She faced him, and when he took off his hat, she saw the blisters.
That’s all it took.
As she reached for her side arm, it had registered a second too late.
He swung out, catching her off guard. Then he was on her, slamming her head off the wood floor.
Elizabeth tried to fight, but Detective Le Bleu had caught her off guard.
As the room wavered, she watched him grab the bag. In it was an ugly knife and a large bag.
She knew what was coming.
Her end.
Chapter Twenty-Two
B&B
Twenty Minutes
Later
When he arrived back at the hotel, he was carrying a bunch of packages. Maybe he’d gone a little overboard when it came to picking up things for Bethe, but he couldn’t help himself.
She was going to have a hard life, and he planned on making it as easy for her as possible. He was fortunate to have that luxury.
Was it wrong?
Probably, but Chris didn’t care. Bethe was his little girl, and she deserved it. The first year of her life had been brutal. The rest would be a cake walk.
While he was out, he’d even grabbed a few matching things for Charlie, since they were going to be best friends.
When he headed into Elizabeth’s room, it was silent.
“Hey, honey, I’m back. I hope you don’t mind the food being a little cold. I got distracted by all the shops.”
When she didn’t reply, he figured she was in the zone. Dropping his things, he tossed his key on the desk beside his phone.
After checking on Elizabeth, he was going to check on Bethe too.
He hoped he didn’t miss anything important.
Heading toward her room, he began getting that wary feeling. Something didn’t feel right.
“Hey, Lyzee, are you…?”
He stopped.
On the bed was a half-naked Elizabeth, and not only was she restrained, but she was out cold.
He took two steps into the room and realized that was a horrible mistake.
“What the…?”
He heard the creak and turned.
Chris took a shot right to the face, landing against the wall.
As he slid down, there was laughter.
The pain exploded behind his eyes.
Oh, shit!
This was going to be bad.
As the man taped his arms in front of him, and then handled his ankles, Chris fought not to pass out.
It was the only way they’d live.
It was their only chance. It was going to be up to him to save them both.
* * * B l a c k h a w k - W h i t e f o x * * *
Morgue
Across Town
Twenty Minutes Later
Both Callen and Ethan had been trying to get Chris and Elizabeth for a while, only both of their phones were going to voicemail. Elizabeth’s the second you called, meaning she shut it off, and Chris’s would ring six times and they’d have to leave a message.
Apparently, they were busy.
So, Ethan had no choice but to make a call.
They were going to see what the team had found.
What was he supposed to do?
At least, this time he’d tried to get her. Hopefully, she wouldn’t construe this as him taking over.
In the morgue, there was the tech team, Doctor Magnus, and the detective. Merry looked miserable and Boone wasn’t all that chipper either.
He was keeping his distance.
Ethan made a mental note to blame his wife for playing Cupid. The odds weren’t in their favor, and it was blowing up in their faces.
The only two people acting normal were the agents as they worked on finding Elizabeth the information she wanted.
“The killer was sloppy,” stated Doctor Perette. “He didn’t even take the blood.”
“Yeah, well he left it behind. It was all over the floor,” Callen reminded him.
“He was alive when he cut out his liver.”
Well, that sucked for him.
“He was in a hurry,” Ethan stated. “He’d barely got to him before us.”
“He hasn’t been dead more than three hours.”
Yeah, they figured as much.
This killer was one-step ahead of them, and they didn’t have a clue how he was pulling it off.
It was like he knew.
“We need to find something,” Ethan stated. “If he was rushing, he might have left us something.”
Tony spotted the brown flake. “Isn’t this the same debris that was on two of the victims?” he asked, picking it off the dead pimp with tweezers.
Merry checked it out. “Yeah, it is.”
“Do we have…?” Ethan didn’t get to finish before the Mass Spec went off. “Are those the results?”
Could he be that lucky?
She grabbed the paper off the machine. “It is, Director. I have the results of the two samples on the other bodies.”
“What is it?”
“It’s tobacco, and to narrow it down, it’s treated with a special high end chemical that’s only found on one kind.”
Well, at least they were narrowing it down.
There were a lot of tobaccos out there, and especially in the Deep South.
“What is it?”
“Port Royal. It’s used mostly for people who roll their own cigarettes. If it’s not bad enough you’re killing yourself by buying them, you’re rolling them in the comfort of your own home.”
Boone looked up. “Wait, what?”
She repeated the findings for him.
His eyes got big, and he began pacing the morgue.
“What’s wrong?” Callen asked.
“So that’s the substance in Victoria and Daphne’s hair, and on Otis too? Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m one hundred percent positive. I’m really good at my job, Boone.”
Yeah, they’d all made mistakes before, and that wasn’t happening again. They had made sure of it.
“Oh, Jesus.”
“What?” Ethan asked.
“My partner uses that brand, and he rolls his own cigarettes.”
Ethan stared at him. “Are you sure? It could be a coincidence.”
“I’m sure.”
Johanna spoke up, “Director?”
He looked over. “I found something.”
“What?” he asked as the three of them headed their way.
“You know how Elizabeth asked us to search the hookers and the pimp all the way back to their arrest records?”
“Yeah, I recall.”
She handed him the tablet. So he could see the information for himself.
Holy shit!
His stomach knotted.
This made sense.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” Ethan said, passing the table to the detective. “Your partner arrested every hooker we found, and arrested Otis at his home on a domestic.”
The address was the same.
“He knew the address?” Callen asked. “Didn’t he tell you on the call that an officer called it in?”
He nodded. “He’s setting us up. That has to be why we’ve been behind. He knows what we’re doing, and he’s misleading us. He’s been getting updates on everything, and he has access to the bodies and data here at the morgue.”
Brody glanced up. “The detective has a sister, and she’s younger and deceased.”
“Can you find me her death records?”
They began typing.
Johanna found it first. “Crap. I have her autopsy records.
Doctor Perette nodded. “It is. If she’s a carrier of the disease, then he would be too.”
“Where’s he from?”
Boone knew that one. “He’s originally from Memphis. When he got divorced, he headed here.”
Callen remembered that Elizabeth had asked him to run any related deaths, and he had, he’d just not studied them when the data came in. he’d been too busy trying to patch up Ethan’s mess. He headed toward the printer to get the details he’d just printed out.
There weren’t a lot of related, unsolved cases.
“We do have one murder and it’s an unsolved in Memphis. The victim’s name was Lorraine Benchman.”
The agents began searching.
They pulled up her driver’s license, and kept searching. As Ethan studied it, Johanna gasped. “I found her missing person report,” she offered.
“Who called it in?”
“Her fiancé.”
She pulled it up on the big screen. They all saw it at the same time.
This was the nail in the coffin.
“He was never divorced. He killed her and then moved. He started with his fiancée first.”
It fit the profile.
The killer would hunt close to home. He’d want to make sure he was safe as he found the victims.
Oh boy.
Elizabeth was going to kick his ass when she caught him. He was a cop, and that was going to be an insult to her.
“He pointed us at the priestess, he only works at night, he smokes the tobacco, his fiancée, years ago, died the same way, and he called us from the Priestess’s house with the hooker.”
Boone was sick over this.
He pulled out his phone and dialed dispatch. He wanted to see if they’d sent his partner to the priestess’s house, or if he’d found her on his own.
He hung up.
“The priestess said she screamed and a cop happened to be there. The proper procedure would have been to secure the scene and call it in.”
“And?”
“There’s no call that someone found the body. He must have dropped her there, and then called us. We never noticed that there weren’t cops there. The scene was all FBI personnel except for me.”
Blood Shall Run (An FBI Romance Thriller Book 15) Page 56