The NightShade Forensic Files: Echo and Ember (Book 4)

by A. J. Scudiere

  “Randall?” Eleri asked.

  “I’ve been dating him off and on for a year.” Wade gave a half-shrug, like what are you going to do? “On because I really like him. A lot. Off because I can’t tell him the truth.”

  It hit her then. She could tell Avery. She was only herself. She wasn’t giving away anyone’s secrets except her own. Should he run off and tell the world, at worst people would think she was crazy or a little psychic. But Wade and Donovan, with every person they told, they didn’t just out themselves but an entire group that had kept their secret for generations. Their safety depended on it. Before she could say anything, Wade spoke again.

  “I’ve considered changing and letting him catch me in wolf form. See if he figures it out. Recognizes me.”

  “That one works.” Donovan nudged Wade. It was how Donovan had found his current girlfriend, if she could be called anything so formal. She’d been stalking him and figured out that Donovan and the wolf were never seen at the same time, a la Clark Kent and Superman.

  Shit. Eleri breathed in and realized that she did feel better. Lighter.

  “We’ll find Emmaline. And you hand those files over to me, too. I’ll help.” Donovan said it so matter-of-factly that she almost cried. It had become too big a burden to carry on her own. Especially knowing that the end of a decades-long hunt was almost over. Grandmere would be proven right, Eleri knew.

  “Okay kiddos,” Dana announced to the van at large. “We’ve arrived.” Here being the assisted living facility where Dr. Kellogg had died. “We have the younger Kellogg in custody still. He’s being transported here. He doesn’t yet know about his father. The two daughters live near here and I’m concerned the son may be a target, too. Does everyone have a good eye out for Mina Aroya?”

  Shit. Eleri pushed her brain back toward the case. She hadn’t pulled her head out of her ass long enough to consider that “the body was still warm” meant the killer was likely still in the area. Or at least couldn’t have gotten too far. She had to stay focused. Pursuing the recovery of her sister’s body would wait until after they brought in Mina Aroya. For a moment, Eleri wondered how hard it would be to prosecute the woman for killing Dr. Kellogg. His history made some of the Nazi scientists seem nice by comparison.

  Dana was checking them out. This time they were going in armed. With handcuffs. Loaded, with one in the chamber. Safeties off.

  For a moment as Eleri checked herself, added a clip-on holster at her waist for her extra magazines, she considered they were headed into an old folks’ home, fully armed. It was almost laughable until she considered that the man had burned to death and bullets were useless against fire.

  She exited the minivan, crawling out of the way back like the badass agent she was, fully on alert. A series of soft head shakes between them indicated no one saw anyone who was or could be Mina Aroya in the parking lot or surrounding areas.

  They headed into the facility, casually in formation. Dana flashed her badge, all of them following suit. Their badges all had the small diamonds at the ends of the border lines, indicating that not only were they FBI, they were NightShade. No one else knew this, but Eleri noticed it each time she looked.

  Her heart picked up pace ever so slightly as they passed the front desk, Donovan and Wade already sniffing the air. Eleri kept her hands at her side, loose, casual looking, but ready.

  She caught Donovan’s eye and he took another sniff, nodded, and tapped Wade on the shoulder.

  “She was here?” Eleri whispered at them.

  “The woman was,” Donovan returned. “Whether that’s Mina Aroya remains to be proven.”

  Good point.

  But this was confirmation of the same killer. Eleri forcibly relaxed her shoulders. The group wound their way closer to the victim’s apartment, their very presence confusing to the residents.

  The director of the facility herself showed them to the room, her face drawn into a grim countenance. She was used to death, but not like this. “No one saw anything. We’ve begun our own questioning.”

  The body had cooled while the agents were airborne. The staff had been questioned despite the FBI request that they not speak to each other. Local agents had come in and started to secure the scene, knowing the special team was on their way, but even they hadn’t been able to stop the gossip, the sharing of stories.

  Eleri waited while Dana inspected the place, but only from the doorway. She couldn’t very well go in and touch the body in front of the other agents. It would look too odd, too far out of protocol. So she just glanced inside. One by one, they stood in the doorway while the others stood guard.

  It was as bad as Eleri feared. The smell of seared human flesh was overwhelming. What had once been Dr. Kellogg was now curled on the bed, charred and shrugged into a “pugilist’s pose.” Common among burn victims, the body pulled into a fighter’s stance as the muscles contracted with the heat. It had not been an easy death. The clear ring of unsinged quilt surrounded him, in case there was any concern this wasn’t linked to the other killings.

  The father of the man who’d been digging in the prime suspect’s yard yesterday now lay dead, but the psychology didn’t add up. That was Eleri: forensics with chemistry and some psych. It was how she’d wound up in the analysis unit following her hunches and attracting the attention of the NightShade division.

  Before she could say anything, she was interrupted by a shrill voice.

  “Who would do this to my father!” It was a demand for justice more than it was a question.

  “And you are?” Dana asked as politely as she could, though it was clear it was one of his daughters.

  “Bonnie Kellogg.”

  Dana only nodded. It was the right response—waiting. It took only a few seconds before the woman broke down. “I should have followed him like Benji and Bethany did. I should have gone into genetics.” Tears rolled down her face as Eleri went on alert.

  “Both of them followed him?” She asked. They were following his work?

  “Yes. I was the black sheep. Elementary school teacher.” She shrugged. “Bethany is on her way here. She’s his favorite. She’s the one who understood him best.”

  Eleri asked a more precise question. “She’s following in the work he started?”

  “Yes.” Bonnie sniffed and wrapped her arms around her waist. “My Dad was a pioneer in genetic research. He saved so many lives.”

  Eleri begged to differ, but her job dictated that she not say so.

  “Tell us exactly where your sister is.” Eleri put her hand on the woman’s shoulder, jolting at the grief coming through the connection. She yanked her hand away but continued. “We’re sending an escort out to her. She may be a target.”

  29

  Donovan looked between the two interrogation rooms, Dr. Bethany Kellogg sat in one, her brother, Dr. Benjamin Kellogg waited angrily in the other. Donovan stood in the central holding room than had a two-way mirror into each of the holding rooms. Dr. Bethany Kellogg was pissed as hell, and with good reason.

  Her father had clearly been painfully murdered. She wasn’t allowed to see him or her siblings. All she knew was that she had been met by an FBI envoy and brought here to the FBI local branch building. She was both a suspect in the case at large and a possible target. She knew none of this.

  Dr. Benjamin Kellogg was being held in the other room, directly opposite his sister. While Donovan could see out windows on either side of the central observation room, Benjamin Kellogg couldn’t see straight through to where his sister sat less than thirty feet away facing him.

  He wasn’t pissed. He was scared, though he was trying desperately not to show it. He should be pissing his pants, Donovan thought. They’d caught him digging in a yard which turned out to contain a dead body within a few feet of where he’d been searching. The FBI had chased him off and shot at him. While Eleri had been trying to miss, he couldn’t have known that.

  This was Donovan’s least favorite part of the job. The best interrogat
ors were people-readers. They were sociable, making idle chit-chat and gleaning information. The first third of the “interview”—because “interrogation” was so harsh a word—was about getting to know your new friend. Once you were friends, they might tell you how they chopped up all their ex-girlfriends and fed them to the alligators. Or why their dad had just gotten so annoying he needed to be shot. Donovan understood this on an intellectual level. He simply had none of the required skills. The only thing that saved him was that he could usually tell when people were lying. They sweated a little; the thing the polygraphs picked up? He could smell that. Usually.

  Christina was with him, the others stayed at the retirement home—at the crime scene. Though Dana was apparently a fantastic interrogator, she was also waiting to touch the body. Dana wanted one nose at the scene and one here. The boss lady had also decided that Eleri’s skills weren’t from touching people, usually from inanimate objects, thus she wanted Eleri at the home as backup to Dana’s skills. Donovan had observed the same thing or he would have argued Dana’s choices.

  “I got nothing.” He sighed to Christina. He didn’t know who he wanted to interview and his current partner was being her usual quiet self. How was she going to question somebody? “You choose.”

  “Let’s be mathematical,” she offered. “What’s the likelihood they’ll open up more to someone of the same gender or opposite gender?”

  He barked out a laugh. “They’ll both react better to a female. Her because my size is threatening—”

  “As is your general expression,” she tossed out in a rare moment of sharing.

  He didn’t disagree. “—and him because he’ll relax more. He probably thinks he’s smarter than either of us, but he’ll see you as less of a pissing contest.”

  “So you choose me to do both?”

  Yeah, actually he did. “Wait. Screw them. Especially him. He can wait. He was attempting to dig up a body. Let him stew in it. Let’s both interview her first. You talk. I’ll sniff. Under the table I’ll give you a thumbs up or down where you can see but she can’t.”

  She nodded, agreeable as usual.

  “Wait.” He put his hand on her arm as she started out the door. Like him, Christina was probably less anxious to get going as she was to just get it over with. “Will you override her?”

  “I don’t know what to show her to make her talk.”

  “Can you look like her sister?” His brain churned with the possibilities.

  “Sure, but I can’t answer like her. It would be so suspicious. Plus, how long before she sees her sister again and her sister says she was never here?”

  All good points. He nodded and followed her out the door.

  He did the introductions, told Dr. Bethany Kellogg they were recording the interview and had her state her name, address, and other pertinent info for the record.

  It wasn’t a long interview. She didn’t want to become their friend, no matter how hard Christina tried or how understanding she was. Dr. Bethany Kellogg was angry.

  “Why can’t I see my sister? I thought my brother was on the way. He was supposed to fly into town last night.” She looked back and forth between them, making her demands before either of them could get a question in edgewise. “Is my brother a suspect?”

  “No.” Christina answered, using the assumption that the question was about the elder doctor’s murder and not in a larger framework Dr. Bethany didn’t even know about. “Please tell us about your work.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” She was bewildered.

  Christina tried to tie it back into something more reasonable for the woman to understand. “We understand that you were continuing your father’s work.”

  “Oh God, did someone target Daddy? Is this about his research?”

  Um. Yeah. Donovan thought it but didn’t say it. With what the elder doctor had done? How could it not be?

  Christina answered it better. “We can’t know for sure until you help us figure it out. Please, tell us about your research.”

  Finally nodding in agreement, Dr. Bethany Kellogg started talking.

  She did viral vector research—which she had to explain in detail to Christina. Basically, she took viruses, gutted them, and made them deliver human or engineered genes into human cells. It was already in use in Cystic Fibrosis patients, in therapies for some cancers. The problem was it only worked where the virus went. She was working on delivering it to all cells as well as targeting ovaries and testes.

  She was excited now, talking about her work. It seemed for a moment she’d forgotten what happened to her father. But that was a normal coping mechanism. “By targeting the reproductive cells, we don’t change anything for the person who gets the treatment, but we can help their offspring.”

  Donovan let her talk even though her comments churned his stomach. He wasn’t against gene therapies in general, but her work was walking the line of developing a God complex. He’d just seen what that God complex could do. He’d dug up the bodies of the victims of it. Her smile wasn’t infectious. He faked it.

  Her smell indicated she was telling the truth and that she wasn’t nervous about her work. She didn’t seem to even understand that she should have some moral dilemmas about it. Maybe she’d had them once and convinced herself it was okay. Or maybe she had a better heart than her father and was simply naive about the way her work could be used. But Donovan didn’t think the second one was it. She was too smart, too enthusiastic, too ruthless sounding to be that naive. She just didn’t care. Shades of her father.

  They exited the room and turned their attention to her brother, Dr. Benjamin Kellogg.

  ELERI TOUCHED THE BED, trying to pick up something. She touched the unburned half of it first. The fire ring around the body was neater than the previous ones. This time it was a complete and perfect oval with the inside untouched and the outside burnt as black and crisp as the body.

  She didn’t study arson, but she hazarded a guess. “I’d say the fire hit two-thousand degrees.”

  Dana looked at her questioningly.

  “See where his lips pulled back? That doesn’t tell us much except that we can see his molars. They popped. That takes high heat.”

  “I thought they could burst at lower heat,” Dana added. Neither of them were fire experts, though they clearly needed to learn.

  “Crowns and dental work, yes, but that’s his untouched tooth. High heat.” Eleri pointed with a gloved finger. It had been a hard find, because his mouth was clenched shut, so the tooth hadn’t popped and disappeared, but remained held together by the force of the jaw. She’d spotted the telltale crack only because she’d been looking.

  Eleri pulled her glove and put her bare hand on the bedspread, hoping she wasn’t destroying any evidence. Dana was behind her doing the same thing on the body. Eleri tried to ignore her.

  At first, the clean bedding gave up nothing. The quilt looked handmade, but even shades of the person who stitched it weren’t coming through to Eleri. She moved around, putting her hand softly, flat onto the burned surface.

  Her breath sucked in.

  Flames engulfed her and she almost jerked her hand back. Though she felt the heat and saw huge bursts of orange, yellow, and blue dancing around her, she could also still see and feel the room as it was.

  Keeping her hand firmly on the destroyed bedding, she turned to survey the room. The entire circle lit up and in the middle she could see Dr. Benjamin Kellogg in his last moments of life. He didn’t run, though he did scream. Whether that was in pain or just a consequence of contracting muscles, she couldn’t tell. He took a step then bounced back toward the middle of the circle almost as though stopped by an invisible barrier.

  Was this why they all died dead center?

  As fast as it came, the image disappeared. Eleri moved her hand. Then again. It didn’t come back. She closed her eyes, stripped her other glove, and placed both hands flat onto the burned part of the bed. Nothing.

  She tried th
e blackened wall. She tried the antique desk—the wood still held heat, though the fire department had doused it. Maybe they’d been looking for something to do in a room that should have been their domain, yet by all reports it was completely put out before they even arrived.

  Eleri wanted Donovan here, but she couldn’t ask him because he was at the branch interrogating the children of the deceased. Despite having a five-member team, they were spread too thin.

  Wade was off sniffing his way through the hospital and trying to acquire the surveillance/security footage from the time of the last murder up until the current afternoon. He was also scoping the place out—by smell and sight—to see if Mina Orlov had hung around to check out her handy work.

  When the visions didn’t come back no matter what she did, Eleri turned to Dana and waited until the other agent lifted her hand from the body. She disappeared quickly into the restroom, presumably to wash something away. Despite being a forensics specialist, Eleri didn’t want to think about what might have gotten on Dana’s skin. Eleri didn’t bare-hand any of her subjects. That was gross.

  When Dana emerged a full minute later, drying hands she’d clearly thoroughly washed, Eleri asked her, “Anything?”

  Dana shook her head. “No, actually too many things. Alzheimer’s—which means I see the things he sees. Such as, he truly believed elves were moving his keys. I saw him giving kids shots and working with cells in the lab. If I hadn’t read the file, I’d have thought he was some kind of pediatric specialist.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” Eleri said wryly.

  “He had a tumor in his liver and arthritis and bone spurs. He lived in a lot of pain—”

  “Good.” Eleri spoke it without thinking, but she didn’t disagree with her immediate assessment. She didn’t like herself for it; on the other hand she couldn’t muster up kinder feelings either.

  “There was a lot in his brain, and it muddied things, but this was just him burning to death.” Dana reached outside the doorway and threw her paper towel into the biohazard bin that had been set up to collect such things. “Are you ready?”