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

by Blake Pierce

  One of the two men had stopped, hiding behind the house. He was now rushing at her, his shoulders low and head tucked in almost like a linebacker. She stopped in her tracks, her feet coming to a skidding halt. As she repositioned herself and turned to the left, she knew she wouldn’t have time to pull Bryers’s gun. Instead, she clutched her hands together into one big fist, raised her arms and the brought them down like a club.

  She made contact just as the man’s thick shoulder collided with her stomach. The wind went racing out of her as she went to the ground. Still, she had landed a solid blow just below the man’s neck and when they collapsed to the ground, he was grunting in pain and instantly trying to get to his feet.

  Mackenzie scrambled to her own feet, fighting to draw in a breath of air. She was much faster than him and by the time she was on her feet, he had barely made it into a crouching position. She launched herself at him in a tackle that sent him back to the ground face first. Wasting no time, she threw a hard knee into the small of his back and then pressed her forearm into the back of his neck as hard as she was able.

  When he tried fighting her off, she pressed her knee harder into his back and her forearm harder into his neck. It was a simple yet effective hold—one of the first she had learned. Any attempt to break free of her was going to result in severe back pain or scratches and abrasions to the face.

  “Where’s the other one?” Mackenzie asked as he struggled beneath her. “Where’s your friend?”

  “Fuck you,” came the answer.

  She put more weight on her knee in response. He grunted out in pain beneath her and tried using his arms to push himself up. Mackenzie reached out and took his left arm, drawing it back behind him. He was slammed into the ground as she bent his arm upwards along his back. He let out another strangled cry that was mostly drowned out by the sound of Bryers rushing up to her side. He was out of breath and red in the face as he dropped to his knees beside her.

  “I got him,” he said as he pulled a pair of cuffs from his belt.

  When he set the cuffs to the man’s wrists, he seemed to pay Mackenzie very little attention. He even bumped into her as he worked, nearly knocking her off of the suspect and onto the ground. Sensing that he was clearly irritated, Mackenzie stepped away and got to her feet as Bryers hauled the man up.

  “Want me to go after the other one?” Mackenzie asked.

  “No,” Bryers spat, clearly upset. He then shook the cuffed man and got into his face. “Where’d the other one go?”

  The man only shrugged. The expression in his face was one of worry but it was also evident that he was going to be stubborn.

  “Was that your house or his?” Bryers asked, nodding back the way they had come from.

  Again, the man said nothing. He simply stared from Bryers to Mackenzie and then back to Bryers.

  “So we’re just going to let him go?” Mackenzie asked.

  The cuffed man smiled at this. He shot Mackenzie an utter look of contempt. He was rewarded with Bryers getting in his face again and returning the smile.

  “Something funny? Seems to me that you’d be a little scared of a woman that just handed you your ass.”

  This wiped the smile from the man’s face. He simply looked to the ground as Bryers guided him back toward the field. Mackenzie followed, feeling a heavy wave of uncertainty wash over her while Bryers was clearly sorting through his own thoughts.

  “Got your phone on you?” he asked her suddenly.

  “Yes.”

  “Call this in to McGrath. Tell him I took the suspect down and we have another one on the loose. Then tell him we need a warrant for the house this upstanding citizen ran out of.”

  “That ain’t my house, man,” the cuffed man said.

  “Finally, it speaks,” Bryers said.

  Mackenzie took out her phone and pulled up McGrath’s number as they walked back across the dead field and returned to the house in question. Even before the phone started to ring, Mackenzie started to feel certain of two things. One: the cuffed man’s instant remark of that ain’t my house meant that there was something there that was going to cause someone a hell of a lot of trouble. Two: neither of these men was the killer they were looking for.

  Their killer seemed methodical and almost predictable. Someone like that would have a plan in place for an easy and foolproof escape should the cops ever come knocking; she didn’t think he’d be the type to simply sneak out the back door and run.

  Of course, she was going to keep these things to herself until they saw the inside of the house. If she was vocal about her gut instinct and turned out to be wrong, there was no telling how it could skew the way McGrath and Bryers thought of her.

  So for now, she simply reported recent events to McGrath as she marched back down the field with Bryers and the cuffed suspect. And even though they technically had a suspect in custody, Mackenzie could still not shake the feeling that there was a ticking clock still pushing her from behind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  The last thing she had expected was for McGrath to give her access to the house once the go-ahead had been given. She was also once again surprised with how quickly everything had moved. Less than an hour passed between her making the call and a small team arriving at the house on Black Mill Street. She had a feeling that Bryers had pushed for her inclusion in the search but did not ask. She simply did as she was told and joined the team of four agents on the small front porch of the last house they had visited in their search of the neighborhood.

  She stayed close to Bryers as the door was taken down by a small battering ram. The door fell in easily, hanging on by the stubborn top hinge. Mackenzie stood back as two agents took the lead, armed with simple Glocks. They took a moment to clear the place, making sure no one was lurking around the corners with weapons, waiting to ambush them.

  “Clear!” one of them called.

  Bryers nodded to Mackenzie and she followed behind him, bringing up the rear. She had no gun now, as Bryers had taken the Baby Glock off of her after she’d made the call to McGrath. She’d already disobeyed the command to be a ghost and Bryers wasn’t about to push his luck by allowing her to remain armed on a case she wasn’t even supposed to be a part of.

  Bringing up the rear of the small group, Mackenzie took in the house like any visitor would. The front door led into a spacious living room, the center of which was adorned by a huge flat-screen TV on the wall. It had been left on during the escape, the screen showing a Netflix menu with action films. A nearly full beer bottle sat on a small coffee table in front of the couch.

  They walked through the living room and into an adjoining kitchen. A few dishes were piled up in the sink. A bag of chips sat open on the counter. A bottle of vodka sat by the sink with a few shot glasses scattered here and there.

  From the kitchen, they ventured into the hallway where the house’s single bathroom and two bedrooms started to give the first indicators that something despicable had indeed been taking place within these walls.

  In the bathroom, the first signs of authenticity to the nosy old neighbor’s claims presented themselves. An empty box of condoms was in the trashcan along with prescription bottles of oxycodone and several boxes of Ambien. There were also a few empty beer cans in the trash which by themselves meant nothing, but in tandem with the oxycodone and Ambien did not paint a pretty picture.

  In the first bedroom—the master, it seemed—the bed was unmade, the sheets in a heap at the foot of the bed. On the bedside table was another prescription bottle of pills and velvet-lined handcuffs. In the floor, a pile of clothes was at first not even worth noticing until Mackenzie noticed a pink border around the sleeve of a shirt.

  She kicked at the pile, not wanting to get her prints on anything. A pair of jeans tumbled from the pile, revealing a white shirt with a glittery star on the front. A series of pink lines ran across the sleeves. Without seeing the tag inside the collar, Mackenzie knew that the shirt belonged to a young girl—a twelve or thirt
een year-old at most.

  “Bryers,” she said.

  He turned and she pointed to it. His face went slack for a moment before he gave her a curt little nod and turned back toward the rest of the search. The small team of four went back into the hall where they checked the second bedroom. The room was essentially empty, with the exception of a small dresser and a mirror that was barely hanging to the wall. One of the agents in front of the group opened up a small closet along the back of the room and said, “Oh shit.”

  One by one, they stepped into the closet. What looked like a small closet from the outside actually opened up into a small room that was roughly ten feet long by five eight feet wide. All four of them stood inside of it shoulder to shoulder, nearly taking up the entire space. One of the agents pulled a cord hanging from the ceiling, turning on a single overhead bulb. It was a dim bulb, illuminating a scene similar to ones Mackenzie had heard about before but had never actually seen.

  A small twin mattress lay on the floor. Another set of velvet-lined handcuffs lay on the floor next to it. A small mirror was affixed to the wall in front of the mattress. A My Little Pony blanket was bundled up in the corner beside a few discarded paper cups. One of the agents took up one of the cups and smelled it.

  “Alcohol,” he said.

  All four of them were quiet. Mackenzie could practically feel their thoughts collectively whirling. Sure, there was not yet any hard proof that the neighbor had been right but everything they were seeing spelled it out for them.

  The lead agent turned to Bryers. Mackenzie was impressed with the blank slate of his face. He showed no expression—no pity or rage or anything. “We’re going to call in a team to scour the place for prints and anything else we can find. You good here?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  The lead agent and his partner nodded and slowly backed out of the closet. As Bryers followed them, Mackenzie continued to peer into the closet. Bryers stood at the door, waiting for her.

  “Don’t do that to yourself,” he said. “Right now we need to focus on getting the guy that got away.”

  “Yeah,” Mackenzie said. She started to back away but as she did, she saw something that grabbed her attention. She stepped further into the closet and dropped into a hunched position just in front of the small mattress.

  “What is it?” Bryers asked.

  “Look,” she said, reaching her hand out and nearly touching the small mirror on the wall.

  In the bottom left corner, the glass was broken, revealing the thin metal backing. The spiraled end of a small screw stuck out about a quarter of an inch.

  “What about it?” Bryers asked.

  Mackenzie hated to say what was on her mind because it went against her strong feeling that this wasn’t the killer. It was a deranged individual, sure…but not the guy that had been killing people going door-to-door and then throwing their bodies into dumpster.

  “The scratch on top of Trevor Simms’s head,” she started.

  “Oh,” Bryers said. Then, after a few moments, he said it again, in a defeated tone. “Oh. You don’t think this is our killer, do you?”

  “This guy was after little girls,” Mackenzie said. “And from what we’ve seen, he didn’t kill them. He just…well, you know. Our guy, though…he’s not picky. And his victims were adults.”

  “But the neighborhood is a match. And if this guy is this sick,” he said, pointing into the closet, “there’s no telling what else he’s capable of.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “We have to go with what we have,” Bryers interrupted. “And right now, this place is almost a surefire score. Relax, White. It’s looking like we got our guy.”

  Mackenzie looked back to the closet, eyeing the screw, and knew without a doubt that he was wrong.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  By 5:30 that afternoon, the second man that had run from Mackenzie and Bryers was apprehended. The house belonged to him and it was becoming more and more clear that the neighbor’s story had been pretty accurate. It had taken just the slightest bit of pressure and questioning to make his friend crack under the pressure, revealing that they worked together to acquire pre-teen and teenage girls for sex. Sometimes the parents were selling them, renting out their own daughters for anywhere between four hundred to one thousand dollars. But more often than not, the kids came of their own accord, rebelling against parents or seeking some sort of messed up security.

  Neither of the men, however, fessed up to the deaths of Shanda Elliot, Susan Kellerman, Trevor Simms, or Dana Moore.

  Less than ninety minutes after discovering the sordid closet, the suspect that had gotten away had been located, officially arrested, and headed for processing. Mackenzie sat on the steps of the house, watching the police car drive into the distance, slightly in awe of how quickly and efficiently it had all played out.

  Bryers stood on the sidewalk, eager to head back to their cars. “You still don’t feel good about it this, I take it?” he asked.

  “I’m glad we got a creep that preys on young girls,” she said. “That’s a plus any day as far as I’m concerned. But this guy is not our dumpster killer.”

  Bryers sighed and nodded. “You might be right. But until I get an order from McGrath to keep looking for a suspect, we have to go with what we have. And what we have is a guy so screwed in the head that I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

  “So even if you have a doubt…you can just let it go like that?” Mackenzie asked.

  Bryers closed his eyes for a moment and Mackenzie could tell that he was trying to be diplomatic. When he spoke, his words were slow and deliberate.

  “At the risk of coming off like a bastard…this isn’t some shit-kicking PD in Nebraska. If you walk out of line in the Bureau, there are always consequences. We run a tight ship and there are rules to be followed. You get that, right?”

  “I get it,” she said. “We sit on our asses while waiting for McGrath to figure out that our killer is still out there.”

  “That’s it, in a nutshell,” Bryers said. “I suspect he already knows it. But he’s going to make one hundred percent sure. I expect we’ll get a heads-up tonight. But for now, we can’t do much of anything other than get out of here. You did really well today, White. Leave it at that for now. Come on. Let’s go.”

  Without waiting for her to respond, Bryers started down the sidewalk, back to where their cars were parked and waiting for them. It was a struggle, but Mackenzie did the same. She followed after Bryers and looked back to the house they’d just come out, and wondered for the first time if she’d made a mistake by taking Ellington’s lead and leaving Nebraska.

  ***

  When she was behind the wheel of her car and watching Bryers pull his own car out onto the street, Mackenzie discovered that she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t leave such a huge question unanswered. She would not be able to hold her head up high if she knew she had potentially left a killer on the loose when his place of residence could be within a mile of where she currently sat.

  She cranked her car and made sure not to pull away from the curb before Bryers had already made his way through the intersection ahead. Another block forward and he’d take a left onto a street that led to a bypass that would take him back to Quantico. Mackenzie had no intention of following him.

  She crept to the intersection he had passed through, hoping he saw her moving in his rearview. She stayed there for a moment until his car was out of sight.

  And then she made a right.

  Estes Street was one block over; she saw the green street sign even as she made the turn. It was the last known street Trevor Simms said he had been headed and it seemed insane to her to simply dismiss it because they had landed an impressive arrest twenty minutes ago.

  She ran a quick circuit of the street, taking in its geography. It ran along for eight blocks before it ended in a decrepit roundabout at one end and changed into the busier Parks Avenue on the other. She drove back down Estes and parked at th
e intersection of Estes and Sawyer, starting within the same point she and Bryers had canvassed on Black Mill Street.

  The neighborhood was nearly identical to what they had seen on Black Mill Street. A few of the homes were better maintained and most lawns were in better shape. Still, she felt nearly naked without a weapon. It was more than the fact that the neighborhood seemed shady and dangerous; it was the knowledge—the undeniable gut instinct—that told her that the dumpster killer lived in one of the houses that waited for her along Estes Street.

  As she walked up the first sidewalk, she again sensed that she was perched upon a ledge that contained her future. She was aware that she could fall at any moment and that there were any number of supervisors and directors that could give her the push that would send her falling over at any moment. She felt the weight of this on her like a load of bricks on her back, but she pressed on anyway.

  It was 5:50 in the afternoon when she knocked on her first door. It was answered within a few seconds by a middle-aged black gentleman. He was dressed in a mechanic’s uniform and looked tired. He, like most others along Estes Street, had just gotten off of work, probably arriving home and seeing a commotion involving police cars on Black Mill Street.

  “Yeah?” the man asked tiredly.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Mackenzie said, working on the sly. “I’m a consultant with the FBI. I don’t know if you noticed the scene over on Black Mill, but we’re canvassing the surrounding blocks in search of a man on the run. Have you happened to see anyone unfamiliar running through the yards or down the streets?”

  The man shook his head. “Nope. I got home, cracked open a beer, and just about fell asleep on the couch. I ain’t seen nothing.”

  Mackenzie nodded, quickly scanning the house behind him. She saw a living room and a hallway beyond. The house was clean and dark, a television murmuring somewhere from within.