Shaking, he rose to his feet and visited each of the other sites. None of them had been disturbed.
I told you—too close to the river.
“Shut up!” He spun again, trying to find the source of the voice, even though he never would.
You can’t do anything right. You never could. The voice laughed at him.
He held his hands over his ears. He couldn’t seek asylum anywhere. The voice would find him. He dropped his hands. “I will prove to you I can.”
You are a loser!
“I will!”
He chose to ignore the rustling in the bushes and the trees on his way back to the drive shed. His mind focused on one thing—proving himself a man.
Chapter 21
The Earth and Evergreen Restaurant could have been a remodeled funeral home, but I never shared that opinion with Becky. With its cream stucco exterior, wood shingled roof, and a tower at the back side, it also had the appearance of an old, modest church.
Inside, it was like Becky had said. They liked their military. Patches from police departments from all over the world were mounted to the ceiling, and Marine Corps plaques were on the bulkheads. The flooring was a green carpet overlaid with a plaid runner. Everything dated back decades, from the dark wooden bar, to the tables that matched, along with spindle-backed chairs.
“Well, you were right about the prime rib.” I stuffed in another forkful. “Very good.”
Becky smiled and turned away.
I swallowed. “Guess it was rude of me to talk with my mouth full.”
“No worries. You don’t like to take your time with your food, though, do you?” She glanced at the plate that had been set in front of me only a few minutes ago. There were barely two forkfuls left.
“Maybe you should be a profiler.” I smiled at her.
“Oh, please.” She further dismissed the comment with a wave of her hand. “As if I’d want your job.”
“You never know. The paycheck—”
“Yeah, probably stinks and isn’t anywhere near what you deserve. Just like the position I’m in, but I deal with less sickos than you would.” She lifted her coffee mug to her lips.
She hadn’t ordered anything to eat, saying that her stomach couldn’t handle food within two hours before bed. I found irony in how eating would disturb her sleep but coffee wouldn’t. She said she drank it more for flavor than for any effects from the caffeine.
“Oh, I don’t know, you get used to it.” I put the last of the prime rib in my mouth. With the swallow, I knew I might regret my decision to eat so heavily this close to calling it a night.
“Really? I thought you were still under your probationary period.”
“I am, but trust me.”
“Yeah.” She bunched up a napkin and released it on the table. “A lot of sickos in a short amount of time.”
“Yep, pretty much.”
Her eyes glazed over again, like they had at the station.
“You never get used what these people—if you want to call them that—do to other people. It would almost be easier to accept an evil spirit at work rather than that of a fellow human being.”
“Coming from the man who analyzes the human psyche.”
“No, it’s true. While illness and preconditioning play a role…” I let my words drift into thin air. I thought about how this job had changed me. Before my first case, the one that had the team and me in Salt Lick, Kentucky, I didn’t even want to think about spirit creatures. Now there was a dark side of me that contemplated how involved they were in our daily lives—how much control they held over our thoughts and our actions.
“You know why I told you that, back at the station?”
I put down my fork and knife and pushed the plate away. “Not really.”
“You were probably wishing you were someplace else.”
“Never.”
“Yeah, right.” She pointed a finger at me. “It’s written all over your face. You’re not a good liar, Brandon.”
“Call it a weakness.”
“Huh, I would have called it a strength.”
There were a few seconds of awkward tension between us, the kind that existed in a halt of banter between strangers, unsure of which direction to steer the conversation, whether to continue down the path it started on or take an entirely different course.
She broke the silence. “I told you in order to give you a bit of understanding into the mindset of these women. You are so focused on the unsub, and what he is or isn’t, what his past was or wasn’t. I think it would be easy to overlook the victims’ mindsets.”
“What are you thinking exactly?” This woman intrigued me. She was a combo of beauty and brains.
“A man cheats on his wife, big deal. Maybe it’s even a sign of being a man, getting out there. The world idealizes them as being worldly and sophisticated. Even though, in a lot of respects, women have advanced in the twenty-first century. We can vote now.” She took pause to toss out a sardonic smile. “However, women are still viewed as inferior. Wages for women continue to be less than their male counterparts. Women are expected to remain fit and active, while men can let themselves go around the middle.”
“Hope you don’t think less of me for eating all that just now.” I laughed, and she tossed the bunched-up napkin onto my plate.
“No, be serious here.”
“I’ll try.” I wasn’t in the mood to be serious. I was fed, though hungry. What would it be like with another woman? I had only been with Deb and Paige. Modern society would view me as naive and inexperienced. I liked to think I had values. With that thought, my failed marriage and images of Paige’s naked body mingled together.
“These women were all married. Respectable, right? I mean a lot these days don’t even go as far as making a commitment. Whether people adhere to their vows or not isn’t what I’m focusing on. But there had to be some level of morals there for them to enter into a marriage.”
“Amy Rogers married a rich, powerful man. Sydney Poole was the wife of a prestigious lawyer who owns a firm. It could have been something as simple as them seeing dollar signs. Women do like the finer things.”
“I take it you have experience in that regard?”
I took her question as a challenge. “I know for a fact.”
“What? You? Married?” Her grin faded when I didn’t form one. “Oh.”
“Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Continue.”
“Okay.” She drew out the word. “Let’s assume they married for love as well. Women do adore being doted on, no matter how independent we claim to be, and we still gush inside when we get a dozen roses.”
“Good to know.”
“I don’t think you’re that naive Agent.” Her eyes drifted from mine to the table. I didn’t think she possessed an ounce of shyness. I was wrong.
“What more are you thinking?”
“Just that these women had some sort of moral compass. If they cheated, perhaps they felt neglected. This other man, possibly your unsub, was there to fit the bill.”
With her saying that, things aligned. “You think that the man we’re looking for may have had connections to the men initially and not the women? You are a genius. He saw these women weren’t getting the attention they needed at home so he saw it as his opening.”
Becky leaned back into her chair, the wood creaking with the movement. “Could be. So, would I make a good agent?”
I flagged down our server and ordered a beer. “Hope you’ll join me.”
She consulted her watch. “It is getting late.”
“Come on, one beer, and it’s on me.”
She nodded. “Sure, why not? Beer and coffee. Interesting combination.”
She laughed, and the sound of it transformed into a soothing resonance. Becky Tulson was already beginning to feel like a close friend.
Chapter 22
The next morning I beat the alarm. It was becoming too much of a habit—under the sheets late but rising with the sun. The o
wner of The Earth and Evergreen Restaurant had accommodated us by staying a little after hours. Before returning to the station, Becky and I ended up having a couple beers and talking like we were childhood friends, separated by years of circumstance. It turns out she almost got married but decided the lifestyle wasn’t for her. I told her I used to be married. Even saying the words aloud reinforced what I wished to forget—I had failed.
She must have seen it on my face, evidenced by the way she diverted the topic of conversation to sports, baseball specifically. I was thankful for her intuition, almost as much as I was for the insight she provided into the case. She gave it an alternate point of view.
A couple hours after waking up, I was back in the room down at PWPD. Jack, Paige, and Zachery were all there and appeared more rested than I felt, even if Paige nursed a cup of to-go coffee.
“How late were you here Kid?” Jack came over and stood beside me as I studied Nina Harris’s picture again. At this point, it felt like I was looking through it.
“Late.” I caught a whiff of Jack’s cigarette-saturated clothing. He didn’t miss his stick on the way over here that was certain. If I inhaled deeply enough, would this air count as second-hand smoke?
“You’re no good to the team if you run yourself into the ground.”
“I thought that’s how you liked your team Jack.”
The way his brow lowered and his eyes fired, I wished I could reel the words back.
“That’s how I like my team?” Jack turned toward Paige and Zachery, who took the cue and left the room. With them gone, he didn’t say anything. He just stared at me.
“You want the answers. You want the case solved,” I said.
“Well, imagine that Agent Fisher. That is the job, but we also have to know when to call it a day. I’m going to ask you one more time. How late?”
“I was here for the case, and I found an interesting perspective.” I wasn’t about to share the fact it was brought to me by a police officer—at least not right now. A few more seconds of his glare, and I answered his question directly. “Somewhere around midnight.”
“Then you went home?”
I had thought about propositioning Becky, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. “What does this have to—”
“Everything.”
Here I thought my putting in the extra hours would impress the man and further prove that I deserved to be a permanent member of his team. In the process, I had accomplished the opposite.
“There are a couple things I don’t care for.” Jack’s eyes went quickly from Nina Harris’s picture, then back at me. “One—”
“I know. You hate tardiness.”
His eyes narrowed and said as much as, don’t interrupt me when I’m talking. “Tardiness. Two, I don’t like a showoff.”
“I—”
He held up a hand. “That’s what last night was really about, wasn’t it? You wanted to show the team how well you could do solo? If that’s the case, you need to adjust the attitude. We are a team. We act as a team. We think as a team.”
“If you hated the fact I was staying, why leave me here?”
Jack fished a cigarette out of the package. “I knew it would tell me a lot about you.”
“And, what did it tell you?” I was angry now, and there was no way to bury the depth of it. The tone of my voice and energy would convey the truth.
“It told me you may act better solo.”
I let out a deep breath. “Last night wasn’t about any of what you’re implying.” There was no way I would tell him it started in a desperate need to avoid going home, and then morphed into a need to prove myself. Why did I always feel I needed to?
“I hope it wasn’t.” He slipped the unlit cigarette between his lips. It truly was the man’s pacifier.
“It wasn’t.”
“All right then, let’s get to work.”
Paige and Zachery walked into the room the instant after Jack said that, and I wondered how much of the conversation they had heard. I sensed all of it.
Jack addressed me. “Let’s have it.”
I studied his eyes trying to ascertain whether this was a trap or a sincere inquiry.
“Pending was here for hours and came up with nothing.”
Paige slapped Zachery on the arm.
“Actually, I’m wondering if we’re going about some things the wrong way,” I said. “We’ve analyzed our unsub but not our victims.”
“Hmm.”
I disregarded Jack’s guttural response. I was determined not to let him throw me off course. I walked to the picture of Amy Rogers. “I wonder who took this photo.”
“You were here for hours, and that’s your question?”
“Zach,” Paige said.
“It’s the way she’s looking at the camera. There is lust in her eyes. Was it her husband, or does this tell us something about her character?”
“Don’t tell me you think these women somehow deserved what happened to them?” Paige’s green eyes, which were normally soft, could have slit silk. She crossed her arms, hoisting up on her bosom as she did.
“Absolutely not.”
Her arms relaxed.
“I do believe it may lead us somewhere, but that’s not the big discovery.” I paused, certain that Zachery would say something smart, but he didn’t. “What if the unsub isn’t connected with the women so much as with the husbands?”
All of them turned to each other. They were taking the suggestion seriously. My smile faded when Jack spoke.
“Where’s the proof of that statement?”
“I still—we still—have to find that out.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s just that we are so focused on the unsub’s state of mind—”
“That’s what we do Pending.”
This time I shot a look at Zachery. “By extension, applying our analysis to the victims opens up another realm of possibilities. These were married women. They had some morals or they wouldn’t have married in the first place.”
Paige laughed. “Or they knew how deep the pockets went on some of these men. People marry for money every day. It doesn’t always have to be about love.”
I shook my head. “I think there was more of a reason and we know that Keyes and her husband planned on being together. They had a child. He wasn’t, and isn’t, wealthy.”
“She felt it was her duty to have a kid. Maybe there was pressure from her parents, the in-laws.”
Why was Paige bucking me like this? A minute ago she was defending me.
“I’m just speaking my assessments out loud.” I wanted to add, I don’t need the judgment.
Jack must have picked up on my thought. “This is why we operate best as a team. We talk things out and reason on them. It doesn’t mean everyone needs to be in agreement.”
My cheeks heated from anger. “All I’m saying is that these women didn’t deserve this.”
“No shit.”
I hated this side of Paige, and, prior to now, I didn’t remember having been on the receiving end. I refused to let her have the upper hand with this one. “What I’m saying is our unsub could have seen that these wives were neglected and swept in as the doting man they wished their husbands were.”
Jack paced a few steps.
“I’ll give it to you. That’s an interesting perspective. He could be close to the family,” Zachery said.
Paige let out a deep breath and rolled her eyes.
Detective Hanes walked into the room holding a clipboard. “I have the list of fitness clubs where our vics belonged.”
Officer Stenson came in behind him and went to the boards that lined the room. He was basically on loan from Dumfries PD to help us with this investigation. He started writing down the names of the gyms. As he scribbled in the abbreviations for the fitness centers, I noticed a pattern. There were similarities.
Hanes continued. “Leslie Keyes was a member of her husband’s gym, Fitness Guru. No other clubs in the area had a record of he
r ever being a member. She was an active member at the Guru up until her disappearance.” He pointed the tip of a pen to Nina Harris’s picture. “She was a former member, but, as we already know, she wasn’t at the time of her disappearance. We did, however, track her down to Health Heaven, a smaller, retro club located at the other end of the city.”
My attention went back to Stenson. He had made his way through about eight of the missing women including the ones of active interest—Keyes, Harris, Rogers, and Poole.
“None of the other women were members of Health Heaven?” I asked.
Hanes shook his head. “No.”
“It’s possible the unsub is an employee at a fitness club,” Zachery said.
Paige tucked some of her red curls behind an ear. “I could imagine a high turnaround in employment in that field.”
Jack had his cell phone to his ear. “Nadia, I need you to—”
I only heard part of what he was saying as my focus was on the boards and how they were filling in. It was plain to see that our victims were all health conscious.
Jack hung up. “Nadia will be pulling the employment records for all of these fitness centers.” He gestured to the boards then looked to us. “She’s still gathering employee information for shipping companies that took I-95 on a regular basis. She said it’s a large pool.”
I could only imagine. Jack seemed to think Nadia’s capabilities were above human, but she did always come through for us.
“How many different gyms?” Paige walked up beside Stenson.
“Six.” He stopped writing and faced Paige.
“Our victims were all active members at the time of their disappearance—”
“No, that’s not the case.” Stenson finished noting the gyms and pointed the tip of the black marker at Paige. “There are five who didn’t hold active memberships at any clubs.”
“Five?”
Stenson walked around pointing to the photos of those women. “They used to be members of clubs but not at the time—”
“Of their disappearance.”
“Correct.”
Paige spun to face us. “There goes the theory of them being connected to a fitness employee.”
Silent Graves (Brandon Fisher FBI Series) Page 10