Lott stood there dumbfounded for a moment before stepping off the porch and heading around the house to the barn. Behind the house, vast open grassland stretched all the way to the other neighbor’s house, probably half a mile away. Lott could imagine waking up to this view every morning and wondered if how a man started his day determined how that day would go.
The barn was white and open, with slats missing on the roof that let in sunshine. Lott poked his head in and saw a man bent down shoeing a horse. Lott waited patiently as he finished. When he let go of the hoof, Lott cleared his throat.
The man had a white beard, and even though he was in the barn, he wore his hat. He straightened and mopped the sweat off his brow with a white cloth he’d kept tucked in his pocket. When he stepped out from behind the horse, he eyed Lott a moment before speaking.
“Who are you?”
“Um…” Lott took a few steps closer and held out his hand. When he saw Isaac King wasn’t going to shake it, he shoved it in his pocket. “My name’s Kenneth Lott. I’m with the Washington Post.” Lott realized as soon as he said it that King may not know what the Washington Post is. Didn’t matter, though—he still preferred it.
“Reporter, huh? Well, you can talk to our preacher if you got any questions.”
“It’s actually about your daughter, Sarah.”
Unlike his wife, King’s face didn’t change. He held an icy gaze on Lott and didn’t speak for an uncomfortably long time.
So Lott went on. “I’d like to know what she’s doing working for the FBI.”
“I ain’t seen her in years. I don’t have any information as to what she is and isn’t doing.”
“Well, that’s the thing, though. See, I can get background information for anybody. Anybody. But there’s nothing in her background that would indicate she should be taken to murder scenes and—”
Lott stopped speaking. At the mention of murder, there was the slightest trace of reaction from King. It was gone almost instantly, but it was undeniable. King seemed to understand that Lott had noticed.
“You know why she’s working for them, don’t you?”
“I don’t know anything. And I would appreciate it if you left my property now.”
Lott suddenly noticed another man in the barn with them. He was across the way in another stall, younger and with shaggy blond hair. The man was holding a broom and listening intently to the conversation.
“I can pay handsomely, and all I want is a reason. Why’s she working with the FBI? What can she give them?”
King turned back to his horse and bent down again as though Lott wasn’t there.
“Mr. King, I can pay money.”
“We don’t need money. Now please leave.”
Lott stood there a moment, watching the man nail a shoe onto the horse’s hoof. He thought maybe the Amish would use something else, something that wasn’t metal, and was slightly surprised they thought that metal shoes, nails, and a hammer were okay but a car wasn’t.
Lott exhaled and turned. He walked out of the barn and wasn’t more than twenty feet out when he saw somebody coming over to him. He glanced over and saw the man from the barn. The man was glancing back, apparently making sure King couldn’t see them.
“How much you pay for that information?” he said, with an accent Lott couldn’t place.
“Depends how good it is.”
The man wrung his hands and looked back toward the barn. “Sarah’s my cousin. We all know about her.”
“What about her?”
“How much you pay, first?”
Lott took the man in. He was frightened of King but also wanted the money. Lott decided he wouldn’t really know the value. “Hundred bucks.”
The man snorted. “Shit. I can make more than that here.” The man turned to walk away and Lott grabbed his shoulder.
“A thousand.”
The man looked at the barn again and then nodded.
35
The daylight broke through the blinds like an unwanted guest. Rosen lay in bed and tried to go back to sleep by pulling the covers over his head. But that didn’t do anything. Once sleep had left him for the morning, it didn’t come back.
Accepting defeat, he swung his legs off the side of the bed and rose, rubbing his face as he walked to the bathroom. After taking a quick shower, he headed downstairs and picked up the paper from the porch and scanned the neighborhood before going back inside. As far as he knew, he was the last one on the block who still subscribed to an actual newspaper instead of getting his news online.
Rosen put the paper down on his kitchen table and made some coffee and buttered toast. He sat and unrolled the paper. On the second page, about halfway down, was a picture of Sarah King.
His heart dropped, and he got up and grabbed his keys before heading out the door.
Though Sarah was a contract employee with the FBI, she wasn’t hourly. She had little reason to be in the office right now but was sitting in the café debating whether to go up. She wasn’t even sure what her job was exactly. Would she actually be Kyle’s assistant and doing things like making copies and sending email, or would they just take her to crime scenes and hope something popped into her head?
Sarah rose and bought a bottle of orange juice and went back to her table, the same one she had sat at with Giovanni. The sun wasn’t out today, the sky overcast with dark gray clouds. The weather had always intimately affected her mood. She found she could always endure more when she at least had sunshine. Before she was done with her juice, Giovanni called her.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey. Where are you?”
“In the café downstairs. Why?”
“Better come up to Kyle’s office. There’s been a… development.”
“What?”
“Come up and we’ll talk.”
Sarah hung up, threw her juice in the recycling bin, and headed upstairs. The elevator was packed with several people she guessed were agents. They were discussing some undercover operation in the vaguest terms and would occasionally glance back to her.
“He’s lying,” one of them whispered. “We gotta keep him in while he’s still useful.”
The other one shook his head. “If he’s telling the truth, we gotta pull him out. It’s too dangerous.”
“If you’re wrong, we’ll lose an entire year’s work.”
The elevator opened on the fifth floor, and Sarah said, “Excuse me,” as she brushed past the two men. Once outside in the hallway, she turned and said, “He’s telling the truth. Vincent is dead.”
The two men glanced at each other. “How the hell do you know?”
“Because he’s standing behind you with a bullet hole in his forehead.”
The elevator doors shut just as one of the men was about to ask something else. Sarah crossed the hallway and into the main area with a dim throbbing in her head that faded away quickly.
A few agents were goofing around at a desk, watching some clip on YouTube. She glanced casually at the screen. Standing over them was the female agent who had been rude to her the other night. Sarah smiled at her, but the woman turned away.
Kyle’s office was empty, and Sarah debated sitting down. She decided it’d be best to wait, so she leaned against the wall and tipped her head back, staring at the ceiling.
Discomfort began at her head and shot down to her feet. She crumpled over, nearly screaming, but the throbbing lasted only a moment and left her with a single image: two children sitting on a bench with masks over their faces.
The masks were colorful, but she couldn’t make out much else. The image was blurry, almost swirling. They were in a room somewhere, and their backs were to the wall.
“Hey,” Giovanni said.
Sarah straightened up and ignored the pain. “Hi. So what’s going on?”
“You better have Kyle explain.”
Rosen and Kyle came in and sat down, leaving a chair for her. She sat, feeling suddenly like she was back in school and the teacher w
as about to tell her something she didn’t want to hear.
“Sarah,” Kyle began, “we’ve got some bad news.” He pushed a newspaper toward her. On the page, in a large black-and-white photo, was her face. “It’s in a lot of papers, and they did a piece on the morning news.”
In black, bold lettering at the top of the article it said, FBI OUT OF LUCK ON THE BLOOD DAHLIA, BRINGS IN PSYCHIC FOR HELP.
“How’d they even know?” Giovanni asked.
Rosen said, “It originated on Skid Row Gossip in a piece by Kenneth Lott. It was picked up from there.”
Sarah stared at the photo of herself. It was the DMV photo she’d had taken only a few years ago. She wondered if she still looked that young.
“What does this mean?” she said.
Kyle glanced at Rosen. “It means, Sarah, that the Blood Dahlia, whoever he is, may now know who you are. I’m not saying he’ll even care, but he’s clearly shown that he is following the investigation. That body on our boss’s doorstep was a taunt. What we’re worried about is that he might find you… interesting. And try to make contact.”
“Make contact? You mean he might try to kill me, don’t you?”
“We don’t know that,” Kyle said quickly.
Giovanni interjected, “Bullshit. This guy’s got balls and is fucking insane. Whoever sold us out needs to be arrested.”
“Agent Adami,” Kyle said calmly, “we’re all on the same team. Understood?”
Giovanni swallowed before answering, and it was as though he swallowed all the anger that had shown in his previous comment. “Yes, sir. I know. I’m just pissed.”
“As am I. I was told you guys ran into Lott at a crime scene. That means he has someone here who pointed him in the right direction and told him when you’d be out there. We’ll start an internal investigation, and I’m sure we’ll find the person. But for now, nobody knows anything about this investigation outside of this room. Clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Giovanni said. Rosen just nodded.
Kyle leaned back in his seat and pushed a key on his keyboard before saying, “In the meantime, Sarah, I think it best if we place you in a safe house with a protective detail. Just until we catch him.” He looked at her. “I think it’s the safest option.”
She nodded. “Okay. If you think it’ll help.”
“Sir,” Giovanni said, “I’d like to volunteer as the protective detail.”
“You can check in as much as you like, but you two need to work this case. I want this son of a bitch’s head on a silver platter.”
Rosen stood up. “We’ll do everything we can.”
Sarah got a distinct impression from him just then. After he’d said, “We’ll do everything we can,” he thought, but it’s not going to be enough.
36
Wolfgram thought the lecture went well. As the students filed out, he wondered how many of them actually saw the beauty in what they’d discussed.
Linear algebra was one of his favorite topics, and the Perron–Frobenius theorem was one of the most intriguing themes in the field. Though it had deep repercussions in probability theory and economics, the theorem was most widely used in the ranking of football teams in the NFL. What a waste, he thought.
As the last of the students were leaving the classroom, Wolfgram kept his eye on one—a young woman, blond with red highlights. She wore spandex workout pants and a tank top, though the temperatures had dipped in the last couple of days.
“Shannon, would you come here, please?”
She came over. Her breasts were plump and held tightly against her body by a sports bra. He could see the elastic band on her shoulder.
“I really enjoyed today’s lecture,” she said.
He smiled. “I’m glad. It’s surprising you’re not a mathematics major. You should really consider it.”
“I thought about it, but I think in the end chemistry looks better on med school applications. I could be wrong, I don’t know. But I’m almost done with chem, so I may as well finish.”
He nodded, gathering the few notes from the lectern. “Maybe we should discuss it further. Why don’t you set an appointment to come see me during office hours?”
“Okay.”
Wolfgram put the papers away and lifted his satchel. He kept pace with the girl as they left the classroom. “I think you’ll find medical school more competitive than it’s ever been. You should have a solid backup. Do you enjoy chemistry?”
“No, not really.”
“But you do enjoy mathematics. I see how you pay attention. Most students are just preparing for the exams, you enjoy the subject matter.”
They walked down the hall to the front entrance, and Wolfgram turned to her. Even without makeup, her beauty shone through and made his heart beat faster.
“Yeah, I guess we can talk about it. I can stop by tomorrow.”
“Sure. I’m pretty booked early, but if you wanted to come around seven in the evening, I should be available.”
“I’ll check my schedule. Thanks, Professor Davies.”
Wolfgram watched her walk out of the building. It was brazen, bordering on careless, to want one so close to him. He normally only chose from the Saturday class because there was no attendance there, no one keeping track of who came and who didn’t.
This class had only twenty people. There would be questions. All her professors might be interviewed. But that hadn’t happened so far with the other class, to Wolfgram’s great surprise and delight. It was then, when he realized no one was coming, that he knew he had overestimated law enforcement. They truly were fumbling around in the dark. He had a sneaking suspicion that arrests were far more luck than skill.
Wolfgram sighed as Shannon turned a corner. He hiked back through the building to his office on the second floor. Though most professors’ offices were cluttered and messy, his was meticulously neat. Every pen, pad of paper, and book in its place. He couldn’t stand being in the offices of his colleagues for the simple reason that he had an overwhelming urge to clean the untidiness. Chaos had never appealed to him.
He sat at his desk and flipped on his computer. First, he checked his email, then he went to his favorites list and the website for Skid Row Gossip.
Though the website was primarily trash, he had grown fond of one writer in particular: “K. Lott.” The writer followed the happenings of the underbelly of the state and had kept a close eye on the Blood Dahlia murders when it seemed that the other news agencies had moved on. Even without mention of the murders, his stories were fascinating. Last week, he’d done a piece on a police officer who had shot his two toddler children, then his wife, and then himself.
The headline excited Wolfgram so much he read it several times, the last half ringing in his head over and over: BRINGS IN PSYCHIC FOR HELP.
He read the article through twice, then he leaned back in his chair and stared at the photo. The young woman was beautiful, a streak of pure white running down the side of her hair. She was far more striking and exotic than even Shannon, who Wolfgram had had his eye on for over a month now.
Psychics had always fascinated him. He had read the report generated by the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency at the conclusion of what they termed the “Stargate Project.”
Stargate had been the federal government’s attempt to verify psychic phenomena. Millions of dollars had been spent between 1970 and 1995. They had brought in psychics from all over the world in the hopes that the research could yield results in the intelligence field. What they found was shocking but, of course, unappreciated by bureaucracy.
Wolfgram had gone over the matrices himself. There was a statistically significant effect of psychic phenomena in the laboratory, particularly with remote viewing, the ability to see and communicate events and places hundreds of miles away. But the results would have to be digested and analyzed for years, and the applications then developed over time. Bureaucracy didn’t have the stomach for developing talent over time. It had no patience.
And funding for Stargate was cut and all the research buried until GRAMA requests brought it to light in early 2010.
A psychic, and a beautiful one at that, after him… How deliciously captivating.
37
The house was in the middle of a neighborhood that could’ve been in Leave It to Beaver. Sarah watched it with detached curiosity. She’d never been in a neighborhood like this. The community was known as Sugarhouse and was filled with mom-and-pop stores rather than the big chains. Two of the restaurants advertised discounted family nights.
As the car stopped in front of a plain-looking home with a fence and yard, Sarah watched Giovanni. The skies had cleared somewhat, and the sun was out again. He was wearing sunglasses, but she could tell he was uncomfortable, because he kept playing with them.
“This is it. Home sweet home.”
“I love it.”
“Most of our safe houses aren’t this nice. Kyle must really like you.”
She looked at the house, the cute square windows, and the little chairs on the porch. “Do you really think I’m in danger?”
“I doubt it, but we have to be careful. If anything happened to you, we… I couldn’t live with it.”
Giovanni was blushing, thinking he had revealed too much. To make him feel better, she gently placed her hand on his, and they sat quietly a moment, letting the breeze blow through the open windows. The neighborhood smelled pleasant, though she could still detect the faint odor of exhaust and smog coming from the city just a few miles away.
“We better get inside and set up,” he said.
The interior of the home was decorated sparsely but well. The furniture appeared to be from IKEA and without any wear and tear. There were even photos on the walls of random families. Probably, she guessed, to fool anyone who happened to look through the windows.
She threw her gym bag full of clothing and toiletries on the hardwood floor as Giovanni went through the house to find the alarm panel. He turned it off and then checked all the closets and rooms. The house was only two floors, a main level and a basement, and he was in the basement for a while. When he trudged up the stairs, he shut the basement door behind him and said, “All good. There’ll be one agent here at all times with you.”
Blood Dahlia - A Thriller (Sarah King Mysteries) Page 16