Before He Sees (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 2)

by Blake Pierce

  “None that I can think of,” Gloria said. “She was a very quiet girl. She kept to herself.”

  Mackenzie wondered about the family dynamic at play in the Moore household. Gloria lived on her own and Mackenzie had seen no family pictures—no sign of a father figure. Perhaps Gloria had raised Dana to also be something of a loner.

  “Had there been any significant developments in her life lately?” Mackenzie asked “Anything that might have had her spending time with new people?”

  Gloria took a moment to think about it and then started to slowly nod. “Well, she’d finally started to gain some traction with her job. She works from home and had just barely been getting by. But about two months ago, things starting ramping up—something about Facebook promotions.”

  “What sort of work was it?”

  “She sold diet pills and vitamin supplements. She called her business Natural Health Remedies.”

  “Any co-workers?”

  “No. It was just her. It was a door-to-door job, really. She had people call to set up appointments. Sometimes they met at coffee shops and sometimes she made house calls. Not very exciting…but she was happy to have it.”

  Something in Mackenzie’s mind clicked—almost as smooth as a key slipping into a lock. Door to door. While Trevor Simms had not worked a door-to-door job, he had been going door to door in an effort to drum up business during the time he died. And what about Susan Kellerman? Hadn’t there been something said about her job that might at least indicate that she had been going door to door? She’d have to go back through the notes, but she thought there might be a link there.

  Suddenly, the door-to-door theory she and Bryers had discussed seemed like much more than a theory.

  “Would you allow me to have access to her computer?”

  “That’s fine,” Gloria said, “but I couldn’t even start to tell you what her passwords are. But if you want, I think I have a few names of her clients. She was always trying to get me to use the stuff she was selling. She always told me the success stories and invited me to call some of her clients.”

  “That would be terrific.”

  “One second,” Gloria said.

  As the woman got to her feet, she swayed a bit. Mackenzie could practically see the grief catching up with her. Mackenzie wasn’t sure how much longer she would last before she broke. According to Bryers, the next of kin, Gloria’s sister, should be arriving shortly. It made Mackenzie feel a little guilty, but she hoped she was long gone before any sort of comfort or sympathy would need to be extended.

  Less than a minute later, Gloria came back with two Post-it notes. There were three names on one and two on the other. Each name had a phone number beneath it. One of them was circled and Gloria pointed to the circled name as she handed the Post-its over. The name that was circled was Becka Rudolph.

  “This one,” Gloria said, “is Dana’s most loyal client. I think she got at least two orders a month.”

  Mackenzie took the names and pocketed them, anxious to follow up on them before McGrath thought to check up. As if the gods were continuing to smile on her even after McGrath’s instructions at the landfill, a knock on Gloria’s door gave her the permission to leave that she needed. Even if she was a bit emotionally unstable, she still wasn’t about to leave a grieving mother alone so soon after having lost her daughter.

  Still walking in that zombie-like state, Gloria walked to the door. When she answered it and saw the other woman on the other side—the appearance too uncanny to not be her sister—Gloria seemed to collapse inward. She folded and then went to her knees, wailing. The woman at the door gave Mackenzie a nearly apologetic look and then went to her sister, also dropping to her knees to embrace Gloria.

  Mackenzie could only stand there awkwardly for a moment. While in the presence of these women’s sorrow, a very familiar anger and determination stirred inside of Mackenzie. She’d felt it for the first time when she had crossed some sort of mental line when hunting down the Scarecrow Killer and now here it was again. It was almost overwhelming, both motivating and painful inside.

  It felt like someone had kicked up a nest of hornets in her guts. Mad and angry, those hornets had come out of hiding and were swarming.

  ***

  Mackenzie called Becka Rudolph before she even pulled out of Gloria’s driveway. Becka had just been getting out of church and had seemed genuinely saddened by the news of Dana Moore’s death.

  Half an hour later, Mackenzie found herself parking in a coffee shop lot to meet with her.

  Becka was roughly Gloria’s age—maybe slightly younger—and looked extremely uncomfortable when Mackenzie sat down with her. She was sipping from a coffee, still dressed in a slightly above-casual outfit.

  “How well did you know Dana outside of your professional relationship?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Fairly well, I guess. She was always personable, you know? She’d come to the house and drop off my order and then show me some of the new things coming up. But after that, she always took the time to ask me how things were going. I wouldn’t say we were friends, but we were certainly on a friendly basis, I suppose.”

  “How long had you been her client?” Mackenzie asked.

  “About three months. She always told me that I was just the second order she’d ever received. And I don’t think he’d been doing business for much more than those three months.”

  “Would you happen to know how she kept up with her clientele? Did she have a calendar or anything?”

  “She kept all of that on her iPhone,” she said. “Whenever she set me up for a new order, she added it to the calendar on her phone.”

  “And when were you due for another order?”

  “Two weeks from now,” Becka said.

  “I know this is a long shot, but by any chance do you know any of her other clients? Maybe you have some sort of idea of where she visited in the last few days?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I don’t. I would—”

  “What is it?”

  Becka took a moment to think, visibly making an effort to recover a memory.

  “Wait…actually, I remember her saying that she was excited about a new potential client. It was a woman that has been in really bad health—an overweight lady. Dana said it was in a part of town she usually didn’t travel to. She thought it was a great opportunity to drum up more business.”

  “Do you know what area that might be?” Mackenzie asked.

  “All I know is that it was somewhere on the west side of town. Black Hill Street, maybe?”

  “Do you mean Black Mill Street?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Yes. I’m almost positive.”

  The sensation Mackenzie had felt of a key slipping into a lock became a turning of that key as yet another connection was made. Suddenly, she was furious that Bryers had not taken her seriously enough to follow up on the Black Mill Street lead they’d had earlier. She understood why he hadn’t, but still…

  She prepared to get up and leave.

  “Wait,” Becka said. “That seems sort of…cold. There’s nothing else you need to know?”

  Confused, Mackenzie did her best to think of any other questions that might appease the woman. She was on a clock here and wanted to get moving; she didn’t have time to coddle a woman to make her feel important just because she was helping with the investigation.

  “No ma’am. As I said, we’re sort of on the clock here and—”

  “Let me see some identification,” Becka said, suddenly stern and defensive.

  Mackenzie had left the plastic card on the lanyard in her car. Admitting that would seem incredibly novice of her but given the circumstances, she had no choice. Idiot, she thought to herself.

  “I don’t have any,” she said. “I’m on a temporary consultant basis with the Bureau. I’m still in the Academy and was asked to—”

  “I’m done here then,” Becka said, suddenly standing to her feet. She looked furious and betrayed.

  “It’s okay,” Ma
ckenzie said, managing to keep her calm. “Really, I’ve been authorized to work this case.”

  “Even if that’s the case, I don’t appreciate your cold and businesslike approach to the death of what was a sweet woman. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

  Mackenzie watched Becka Rudolph storm angrily out of the coffee shop and then uttered a shaky: “Shit.”

  Still, the Black Mill Street connection was suddenly very promising. Susan Kellerman had been headed there before she died and now there was a link to Dana Moore as well. Finding an address for someone that was in poor health might be harder, and she’d need bureau resources to do it. Surely McGrath would allow her to run with it.

  And if he didn’t?

  She couldn’t wait to find out.

  Feeling a new sense of urgency course through her, Mackenzie went back out to her car and pulled up GPS directions for Black Mill Street.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  With what she felt was a solid lead in place, Mackenzie weighed her options. She could sit on it and wait to continue pursuing it herself—which was what she wanted to do—and possibly get McGrath even more pissed at her. Or she could notify Bryers right now and hope that McGrath and everyone working beneath him would have the good sense to follow up on it.

  She decided that given the tumultuous nature of her current situation, the best thing to do would be to call Bryers. She did so. But when she revealed what she had discovered in conversations with Gloria Moore and Becka Rudolph, he was not nearly as pleased as she had anticipated.

  “Look, Mackenzie,” he said. “I’m going to be as honest and straight with you as I can, okay?” Bryers said.

  “Okay.”

  “If McGrath told you to speak to the family, that’s all he meant. Questioning someone not directly involved with the victim was outside of the permissions he gave you. If there’s even the slightest hiccup with this Becka Rudolph lady, it could all be very bad for you.”

  “Fine, I get it,” Mackenzie said. “I went too far. I’ll stop. But can you please pass the Black Mill Street information on? It can’t be a coincidence, can it?”

  Bryers sighed through the phone and it was nearly deafening. “Look, I’ll pass this on to McGrath, but if he asks how you got the information, I have to tell him the truth. You could get your wrist slapped for reaching out to Becka Rudolph.”

  “That’s fine. Just…what else can I do?”

  “For right now, I’d just wait. I’m the go-between right now, the middleman for you and McGrath. Of course, he just wants you completely off of this and—”

  Mackenzie’s phone beeped, signaling that she had an incoming call. She checked the display and did not recognize the number. “Bryers, can I get back to you? I’ve got another call.”

  “Sure. Bye for now.”

  Mackenzie switched over to the incoming call. “This is Mackenzie White,” she said.

  “White,” a man’s voice said. “Just what in the almighty hell do you think you’re doing?”

  The voice was filled with fury, making it easy to figure out who it was. McGrath was on the other end and he was beyond pissed.

  “Doing what you asked, sir. I spoke with the mother.”

  “And then what?”

  “She gave me a promising lead that I followed up with.”

  “I know that. A woman named Dana Moore. You know how I know? Because she called the FBI mainline and lodged a formal complaint against you. No badge and she said you were very rude. Imagine how I felt getting a phone call like that from the main office.”

  “I wasn’t rude. I was just to the point and—”

  “I don’t care what you were. You had no right to speak to her at all! You weren’t authorized.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. But I had to follow up on—”

  “No. Those nineteen or twenty hours you had remaining are revoked. You’re now officially off this case. I’ll have a talk with the director to see if I can convince him to let you stay in the Academy.”

  “But there’s a lead. A very promising lead, and it can—”

  “Quiet, White,” he snapped. “You’re done with this case and I hope to not speak to you again until you’ve graduated the Academy. Am I understood?”

  Fuming and furious, Mackenzie had to bite her lip to not retaliate. Finally, through clenched teeth, she nearly hissed: “Yes, sir.”

  “Good.”

  Without a goodbye or anything similar, McGrath ended the call. Mackenzie could feel herself trembling with anger as she threw her phone hard across the car in frustration. She slammed a hand against her steering wheel and let out a barking curse, realizing that she was extremely close to having a mental breakdown on the freeway.

  She took several deep breaths to calm herself and, although she hated to feel as if she was retreating, she headed to her apartment. She could not ever remember feeling so defeated and alone. Even after discovering the body of her father, dead on the bed all those years ago, she’d had the police that had shown up to the scene and her catatonic mother to lazily console her. But now she was alone, in a city she barely knew, knowing there was a killer on the loose that she had failed to catch.

  And maybe she never would.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Mackenzie went back to her apartment and knew she should let it go. But she could not. Rather than mope around, she again went to the case files. She had never been one to give in to defeat. And she wasn’t about to start now.

  Mackenzie knew that she had pored over them and had missed nothing, but it was the only productive thing she could think to do. Maybe if the case files presented something to her, she could at least run it by Bryers—if McGrath hadn’t already ordered him to stay away from her.

  Just as she was slipping the files back into the folders, her cell phone rang. Her heart leapt in her chest, as she was sure it would be Bryers or McGrath, telling her that something new had come up and they had decided they needed her after all. It was a childish hope, but one she could not deny.

  When she saw Zack’s number, the soaring feeling in her heart turned to a weight and she got irrationally mad. Any other time, she might have simply ignored the call and let him speak to her voicemail again. But she was mad, tired, and somewhere between frustrated and livid…and she needed to relieve it somehow.

  She answered the phone on the third ring and didn’t even pretend to be nice. “What is it now, Zack?” she asked.

  The tone of her voice must have surprised him; he hesitated a moment before responding. “Well, it’s nice to hear your voice, too,” Zack said. He was trying to sound hurt but had the tone of someone that was looking to start a fight.

  “You called me,” Mackenzie pointed out. “What do you want?”

  “I wanted to make sure you were still happy there.”

  “I am,” she said, realizing just how big of a lie it was in that moment.

  “So I’m supposed to believe that you don’t miss me at all?”

  “Believe it,” she said. “I have a clean apartment without anyone to clean up after once I’ve come home for the day.”

  “Why do you have to be so damn mean about it?” he asked.

  “Because sometimes I think that’s the only way to get through to you.”

  Again, he hesitated. She could sense a change in the silence now, as if he was maybe formatting another method of attack.

  “Was it really that bad?” he asked, suddenly sounding like a victim.

  She bit back the first response that jumped to her tongue and this time it was her that hesitated. “It wasn’t at first,” she said. “But honestly, none of that matters now. None of it. I’m gone, Zack. It’s over. It didn’t work.”

  “I just wanted to make sure you still felt that way,” he said. “Because as of now—after this conversation is over—I’m giving up. I want you back…well, I think I do, but you’re making it clear how you feel. I’m done now, too. So when things don’t work out for you up there, you can forget about me. I won’t be here waiting f
or you when everything falls out from under you.”

  A slight wave of relief swept through her but given the way her day had gone, a retreat back to Nebraska suddenly didn’t seem like such an impossible outcome.

  “Good to know,” was all she said, though. “Look, Zack, I’m sorry but I have to go.”

  “Ah, the busy bee,” he said mockingly. “I almost forgot. Go on, Mac. Get out there and catch those bad guys.”

  The comment stung and she was unable to remain civil. “Fuck you,” she said, and then ended the call.

  She clenched her fists and then unclenched them, nearly throwing her phone for the second time that afternoon. She took a series of deep breaths, trying to calm herself. Nothing seemed to work.

  Then, acting on impulse only, she simply remained tense and angry as she thumbed through the contacts on her cell phone and called Harry.

  He answered quickly and when he did, Mackenzie was brief and to the point.

  “You still available for those drinks tonight?” she asked.

  ***

  Thirty minutes later, she was in the shower. The hot water slowly started to soothe her, and as she came down from the anger and frustration, she very seriously considered calling Harry to cancel the night’s plans. The only reason she decided not to in the end was because she had taken a huge step in even calling him earlier that day. She was making progress in all areas of her life and while her social life didn’t seem particularly important right now, it was still a form of growth. She wouldn’t let a venomous conversation with Zack change that.

  Forty-five minutes later, she was dressed and ready to head out. Before she walked out the door, she checked her e-mail with her phone one last time. Naively, she was still hoping someone within the chain of command would realize what an asset she could be and invite her back on the case.

  She got no such confirmation when she looked to her phone. Other than a few junk e-mails, there was nothing new to see. With a scowl that quite honestly made her feel like a pouting child, she left her apartment, determined to allow herself not to care as the night progressed. She’d been given an amazing opportunity and it was her own damned fault that it had not worked out. She had no one to blame but herself and for now, she was perfectly fine with placing the blame where it needed to fall.