by J. L. Brown
Jade glanced back toward the building and scanned the grounds. Her eyes settled on Nate. “I’m going to spend some time out here, if you don’t mind.”
“Take all the time you want. Call me if you need anything else.”
Nate ambled away, rounding the building to his car parked out front.
Jade stood for a long time on the spot where Kyle Williams had died. When working a case, she always tried to use the name of the person as much as possible rather than “the victim.” Sometimes, the essence of a murdered person was lost during an investigation.
Jade never wanted to forget who she was working for.
*
The foundation of the house was built with the same fieldstone as the buildings at the college, the siding of the house once white. Green shutters hung next to the windows, paint chipped, one crooked, as if it didn’t want to be like the others. The yard boasted more brown patches than green.
Jade knocked at the wooden, weathered door. And waited. No footsteps approached, although someone was at home. She was expected. She knocked again.
The door opened with effort, partially concealing a woman who appeared close to seventy but, according to her file, was in her mid-fifties.
“Mrs. Williams?”
The woman nodded.
Jade held up her badge. “I’m Special Agent Jade Harrington. We talked on the phone.” No response. “May I come in?”
The woman half nodded, stepped back, and swung the door open the rest of the way. Jade entered a darkened foyer and followed Mrs. Williams as she shuffled a few steps into the sitting room. A large bay window faced the front yard. The woman sat on a sofa with her back to the window. She clasped her hands on her lap. She didn’t offer refreshments.
“Mrs. Williams, as I told you on the phone, we’re investigating the death of your son.”
“Why?”
Not the question Jade had expected. Didn’t she want her son’s killer found? No matter how long it took to solve the case? “There’s evidence that his death may be related to others.”
She continued to gaze at Jade, but didn’t ask the obvious question. After a moment, she broke eye contact with Jade and stared at her hands.
“He was such a good boy. Had such a bright future. He could’ve been anything he wanted to be. I died, too, the day my son was taken from me.”
Jade waited a beat. “Mrs. Williams, can you tell me anything about what happened that day?”
“He still lived at home. Before school, he ate breakfast, kissed me on the cheek, and told me to have a good day. I never saw him again.” She looked at Jade, her eyes pleading for forgiveness. “I should have told him I loved him.”
“Did he write, make notes, keep a journal? Anything like that?”
The older woman glanced to the left before shaking her head.
She was lying.
Jade pressed. “Are you sure?”
The woman’s lips formed a hard line, another quick shake of the head.
Jade let it go and asked her many questions, but didn’t learn much more than what she had learned from Nate. After a half hour, Jade realized the trip to this house was a waste of time. She started to get up. “Thank you, Mrs. Williams, for your time. I won’t keep you any longer. I can show myself out.”
She was still examining her hands. “I didn’t tell . . . He did. He did keep a journal.”
Jade sat back down. “Do you still have it?”
Mrs. Williams nodded. “I found it in his room.”
Jade remained cool. “May I see it?”
*
Kyle’s room appeared unchanged since his death. A poster of Kid Rock pointing an index finger straight ahead hovered above the headboard of the neat, twin-size bed. Other than the poster and a small desk, the room was bereft of trophies or personal items. A thin book lay on the nightstand. His mother picked it up and handed it to Jade.
“I found it a few months after his death under the mattress.” She shrugged her shoulders and gave Jade a weak smile. “I finally got around to washing his sheets.”
“Did you read it?”
With a slight shake of her head, no, Mrs. Williams looked away.
Jade didn’t think she was telling the truth again. It didn’t matter. She held the journal, and then opened it, flipping through the pages until she came to the last entry, written the night before Kyle died.
I don’t know for sure, but I think someone’s been following me. It’s creeping me out. For some reason, I think it’s C. But why? I should tell someone, but who? What would I say? Everyone would think I was paranoid. That I’m the creep.
Jade sat on Kyle’s bed, ignoring Mrs. Williams’ quick intake of breath. She scanned several entries. More of the same. “Mrs. Williams, why didn’t you take this to the police?”
The woman was back to staring at her hands again. The silence dragged on for so long, Jade thought she hadn’t heard the question. Jade was about to repeat it.
“I couldn’t,” Mrs. Williams said, her eyes filled with anguish. “It’s the only part of my son I have left.”
Jade nodded and closed the journal. She moved toward the desk. Textbooks were intermingled with books on Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, and other conservative thinkers. Towering above them all was a Chattenham College yearbook.
Jade’s pulse quickened. She opened the yearbook to the index and scrolled down until she located the radio station. She turned to the appropriate page. In a corner, among the text and the large motto of the station, was a photograph of the radio station crew. She found Kyle Williams: short, slight build, blond hair, smiling. She read the names under the picture. The crew had a couple of “Cs.”
Jade glanced up at the older woman, trying to appear nonchalant. “May I borrow these?”
Mrs. Williams shifted, uncomfortable.
“I’ll bring them back.” Jade stared into her eyes. “I promise.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Columbus, Ohio
Whitney rolled over, knowing she should be getting ready for another day of campaigning. She was exhausted, even though presidential candidates were not allowed to get tired. If that leaked out, she could imagine Ellison’s camp airing an ad of her sleeping, with the sonorous voiceover: “What will happen when Senator Whitney Fairchild receives the call at three a.m.? Will she hit the snooze button, roll over, and go back to sleep?”
She heard an insistent knock on the door of the hotel suite. A few minutes later, Sarah, her body woman, knocked on her bedroom door. “Senator, Ted’s here. He says it’s urgent.”
Isn’t it always? “I’ll be right there.”
Whitney sighed and went to the bathroom to freshen up. Still in her pajamas, she threw on the cream-colored, hotel-provided robe and slippers. In the living room, Ted sat on a sofa, his suit rumpled, his tie skewed, and his hair uncombed. Was that the same shirt he wore yesterday?
“Good morning, Ted.”
“Good morning, Senator.”
She turned to Sarah. “Please order breakfast. The usual. Thank you.” Sarah nodded and left. Whitney turned to Ted. “What is it?”
“You need to start going to church.”
“Why?”
“Americans expect their president to go to church.”
“Why does the faith of the president matter? I thought this country was founded on the principle of freedom of religion, which denotes a freedom from religion.”
“Optics, Senator.”
“Ted, did you really wake me up for this?”
“And this.” He flung the Columbus Dispatch down on the coffee table, a large photograph of Grayson and her smiling above the newspaper’s fold. The photo was taken at an event earlier this year, a rare occasion when her husband had joined her on the campaign trail. The headline screamed Personal Bailout? Below, in a smaller font, read Graysongate: Husband of Presidential Candidate Benefited from Federal Funds.
She picked up the paper. The news item explained in detail how Grayson’s company av
oided paying millions of dollars in taxes as a result of a bill she had sponsored as a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee. In the article, Senator Eric Hampton accused Whitney of nepotism and implored her to withdraw from the presidential campaign. The bill in question was passed years ago, which Hampton knew. The article insinuated she proposed and pushed this bill through for her husband’s benefit. Of course, she knew Fairchild Industries would be a beneficiary of the bill. But that was not her intent, only a consequence. A lot of American businesses benefited. That was the point.
She dropped the paper back down on the coffee table. “Hmm . . . , I wonder why this is coming out now.”
Ted eyed her. “Is that it? Will anything else come out?”
Sarah had let in the room service server who placed the breakfast items on the table and left as quietly as he had arrived.
Whitney poured herself a cup of coffee, grateful for the interruption. “No.”
“Obviously, this is from Ellison’s camp,” Ted said. “It’s already on Drudge.”
She reached for a croissant. “Ah . . . then it must be true.”
Ted overlooked her sarcasm. “We must issue a strong denial and nip this in the bud. We can say when you introduced this bill, you were trying to help companies keep jobs in the United States. You had no way of knowing your husband’s company would benefit. Yada, yada, yada. I’ve scheduled a press conference for you this morning.”
She nodded, wondering how long she would need to ride the elliptical to work off the croissant. She had to find more time to work out. Constituents did not like overweight female politicians. “Okay. I will do one press conference on this subject. With the twenty-four-hour news cycle, this story will be forgotten with the next ‘Breaking News’ headline.”
She finished the croissant.
“So, our president wants to play hardball,” Whitney continued. She disliked negative politics. But she disliked losing more. Whitney had learned her profession in the rough-and-tough arena of Chicago politics. She didn’t back down from anyone. She smiled at Ted, the smile that had helped her to become the most powerful woman in DC.
“I read somewhere that when you are a female US senator, people tend to underestimate and trivialize you.” Her smile evaporated. “But I can play hardball, too. What do we have on him?”
Ted didn’t hesitate. “When Ellison was in high school, he and a bunch of his popular friends got drunk and went from ranch to ranch punching and kicking pigs. I think one was set on fire. Many of the pigs died.”
Whitney took a sip of her coffee. “Was he arrested?”
Ted shook his head. “The farmers were paid off by the boys’ rich daddies. ‘Boys will be boys’ and all that. The kids left for different colleges the next year, everyone sworn to secrecy. The incident forgotten.”
“What an awful story.” She replaced her cup on the table. “I never liked that saying. ‘Boys will be boys.’ As if they possess a license to do whatever they want.”
“Unfortunately, we didn’t have cell phones back then to capture it on video, but the public still doesn’t like cruelty inflicted on animals. This would hurt Ellison. Bad.”
Whitney did not hesitate. “Use it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Washington, DC
In a windowless conference room at the Bureau, Jade popped an M&M into her mouth and scanned the faces around the table: her task force, code named CONFAB. Jade came up with the name herself: to honor the victims’ profession.
CONFAB consisted of Christian Merritt, Dante Carlucci, Max Stover, Pat Turner, and a hungry, freckle-faced rookie agent named Austin Miller.
Jade brought everyone up to speed on the case. “We can presume our victims were killed because they were conservative media personalities. Who would have a reason to kill them?”
“Every liberal in this country,” Pat said, typing notes into her computer as she talked.
“We may need to narrow it down,” Jade deadpanned.
“Someone who was offended by something each of the victims had said?” This from Christian.
Dante, his chair leaning against the wall at a precarious forty-five-degree angle, said, “A rival who wants to be the top dog?”
Jade nodded. “Possibly.” She turned to Max. “Talk to me.”
“The UNSUB has complete disdain for his victims. He makes no attempt to hide the bodies and leaves them in disrespectful states. The multiple blows with a blunt instrument are overkill, demonstrating his rage. Something is causing him to accelerate the murders. The time between them is getting shorter. He will strike again.”
Max had the team’s full attention. Jade motioned with her hand for him to continue.
“He cuts out the victims’ tongues, but doesn’t keep them as trophies. Why?”
“He’s in a hurry?” Christian asked.
“No room in his refrigerator?” Pat asked.
Jade frowned at Pat. “He doesn’t want them.”
“Perhaps,” Max said.
“Why wouldn’t he want them?” Austin asked.
Max shrugged. “He doesn’t want anything to do with the victims after the act.”
“Or maybe he doesn’t like trophies,” Jade said.
Christian crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Where was the tongue of the Houston victim found?”
Jade responded without glancing at her notes. “In a trash can by the elevator in the parking garage.”
“Complete disdain is right.” Christian eyed Max. “Best guess of what kind of person we’re searching for?”
“A highly organized individual with advanced social and planning skills. I believe he possesses above-average intelligence and comes from an upper middle- to high-income family.”
Dante leaned forward, allowing his chair to drop to the floor without softening the landing, startling Austin. “Is he also a loner who wet the bed and picked the wings off insects as a kid?”
“I bet the UNSUB felt unloved growing up,” Max continued, ignoring Dante. “May be an only child. He suffers from depression and feelings of despair.”
“I’m curious, Max,” Dante said. “What do you do away from work? What’re your hobbies?”
“I don’t have any hobbies.”
“Everyone has a hobby.”
Pat said, as she continued to type, “Dressing up like the characters on Miami Vice on the weekend and asking out as many women as you can is not a hobby.”
Dante’s face reddened. He leaned his chair back.
“What’s Miami Vice?” Austin asked.
Christian laughed.
“Let’s get to work,” Jade said, turning to Christian. “I want you to focus on the three latest killings: Pittsburgh, Baton Rouge, and Houston. Let’s see if we can track the UNSUB by where he’s been. Check out the manifests for flights, hotels, and rental-car agencies in those cities around the dates of the murders. Maybe we’ll get lucky and he used the same name.”
Christian nodded. “Got it.”
“Pat, you research the lives of the four victims and create a dossier on each of them. Besides their occupation, were they connected in some other way? Were they ever in the same place, such as a conference? Did they belong to the same professional organizations? Where did they go to school? Where did they work before? Subpoena email, cell phone, computer records, anything you need.”
Pat started typing at a different pace, already working on the assignment.
“Dante, I want you to check out the college yearbook. Interview everyone who worked at the Chattenham station at the time, all Kyle Williams’s friends, and cross-reference your lists with Christian’s.”
Dante’s eyes bored into hers. “I know how to do my job.”
“Then, you also know why your job is the most important.”
Austin glanced at Dante and back at Jade. “I’ll bite. Why?”
Jade answered him, without breaking eye contact with Dante. “Serial killers often end up living near their first victim.”
“How do we know he was the first victim?” Christian said.
“We don’t,” Jade said, “but we must start somewhere. I think Chattenham may be the key.”
Jade turned to Austin. “I want you to listen to every broadcast of the victims for the last few years of their lives. Did the same person call more than one of them or become mad or upset? The college station may not have kept its recordings but find out. Same with the blogs and columns for Paxson and LeBlanc. Read them and readers’ comments.”
Austin threw up his hands. “That’ll take months!”
“Then you better get started,” she said.
Dante smirked at Austin.
“Dante can help you, if you need it,” Jade said.
Dante’s smirk disappeared. “What are you going to do, Chiefette?”
She tensed and willed herself not to punch him in the face. Her voice softened to a low, dangerous level.
“Don’t call me that, Dante. Belittling me is unacceptable. And I won’t stand for it.”
He mumbled a response.
“What was that?” she asked. One word. Just say one word.
His eyes tried to hold hers and failed. He stared at the table. She addressed the rest of the group.
“I’m going to get in touch with the MEs and ask them to review their cases again in light of the new evidence. Inform them that their cases may be connected to others.”
“We need to make sure all the evidence gets entered into the database,” Christian said.
“Good point,” she said. “Everything should be entered into the database before you leave for the day. Any leads, evidence, suppositions, wild theories, anything, needs to be entered, even if the info doesn’t seem important. Got it?”
Everyone nodded, except for Dante.
She stood and started gathering her materials. “Okay. This is our room for the duration. When in town, I want us to meet here twice a day: nine a.m. and five p.m. Be prepared to debrief me on anything since the prior meeting. If you discover anything important between meetings, don’t wait. Tell me immediately. Any questions?”