“Benji dated Mina for a while. She was Mina Orlov then. I don’t know what she wanted from him, but I always got the impression that he was her meal ticket for something. I thought money, but then she dumped him for Peter Aroya.” She looked up at Donovan, then Eleri, then back to Donovan. “I swear, I have no idea how she even knew Peter Aroya. He didn’t have money, but she threw Benji right over for him.”
“Threw him?” Donovan asked, not sure what she meant.
“Dumped him. Big time. Next thing I know she and Aroya are married.”
She was getting worked up, so he turned to get her a glass of ice water only to find Eleri standing there with it. It almost hurt to serve this bitch, but it had to be done, because she knew something. She knew a lot.
The younger Benjamin Kellogg had dated Mina?
There was a warrant to search his home. Donovan was praying the man kept a diary that he told all his teenage girl secrets to. Or maybe he went full Watergate and thought his ideas so were grandiose everyone would want to hear his recordings.
Donovan was opening his mouth, when Eleri tipped her head slightly, assessing the woman. “You can drink it. I’ll get you more.”
“I want water around in case that bitch shows back up.” The ice clinked against the sides of the glass from the way her hand shook.
This time Donovan didn’t have to ask a pointed question. Bethany Kellogg was already talking. She’d calmed a little at first, telling about her brother, trying to help them catch whomever was doing this. It had been about five minutes and the only updates buzzing in on his watch were the same ones he saw Eleri trying not to roll her eyes at. Nothing. The agents had fanned out around the hotel.
No Mina Aroya. No fifteen-year-old girl who might be Mina Aroya’s daughter. Nothing. It was as if she’d vanished. It was time to ask the most pertinent question.
“Tell me what happened in the room.” He asked.
“You opened the door for her!” Bethany Kellogg accused. “Then she came in and set everything on fire.” The ice clinked harder.
“Who?” He asked as calmly as he could. He hadn’t seen anyone.
“That bitch.”
“Who?” He needed a name and he hoped Bethany caught on before he had to say specifically that.
Her mouth opened and shut. Her eyes darted as her anger turned to confusion. “I don’t know.”
“You know her but you don’t know her name?” He asked. “Can you work with our sketch artist and give a description?”
“I—” she started then started over. “I— don’t know her name, and I can’t see her face. It’s almost like it wasn’t there.”
He tried a different tack. He’d been trained in this and was discovering it was easier to interrogate someone he hated. “Can you tell me what she was wearing?”
“I—” She huffed out her breath and shook her head. “I can’t see her. In my memory.”
“Do you know her?”
“How would I know?” Her confusion turned to anger. “She was there. But I can’t remember any of it. I can’t see her, but that bitch tried to light me on fire.”
“You know it was a woman?” He asked again, his own frustration growing. It seemed she had more information before she opened her mouth. It was supposed to go the other way. Get them talking, get them accessing the memories and the information started to flow. But no, this was damming her up.
“I—”
Good God, another stilted, lost answer.
Eleri tapped his shoulder. “Can we talk?”
“Don’t you leave me alone!” Though the words were angry to the very core, Dr. Bethany Kellogg reacted this time with fear. She clutched the glass of ice water in two hands. The water shook until it sloshed.
“We won’t.” Eleri reassured her, even as she headed for the door. Eleri was definitely better at reassuring than he was. He wanted to yell at the woman. Tell her what her father had really done. Tell her why Peter and Mina Aroya hated the Kellogg family so much. Eleri thought the same things he did. She just hid it better. Must be all that Southern Belle training.
She brought the other agent back into the room and waited while Dr. Kellogg negotiated with him to bring the fire extinguisher with him while he stood guard. Donovan didn’t point out that it had already been discharged. He let that part of his mean streak stand. Eleri was pulling him into the hallway and into yet another room they had charge of before he could say goodbye to the woman huddled in the chair. Eleri had her weapon drawn and he found that his own hand had already reached for his Glock.
Without a word, Eleri nodded at him and turned the knob. In perfect unison, they swept the room, finding nothing. He watched as Eleri pushed her foot into the seat of each of the chairs. As she waved her arm into the shower curtain checking with her hand as much as with her eyes. He wanted to ask her about it, but she was holstering her weapon and turning to face him.
“Donovan, what happened back there?”
He shrugged. He truly didn’t know.
“She said you opened the door.” Eleri stated. It wasn’t an accusation and she managed to make sure he didn’t feel that it was.
“I didn’t.”
Eleri shook her head at him as though trying to make some of the pieces fall into place. “But the door was open.”
“What?” He leaned forward.
“I heard the scream and turned to look from the elevators. From where I stood—” She shook her head again, her eyes darting toward the floor as she remembered what she saw. “—it looked like the door was already open. You were turning to go inside but the door was open. Who did that? How did you let them?”
He thought back and realized that the door had been open when he went through. He pointed toward the other room, trying to remember the other agent’s name, but Eleri was already on it.
“He says he didn’t open it. And he remembers that when the two of you turned, the door was open already.” She paused. “Bethany? Did she do it?”
Donovan shook his head. “We would have noticed.”
“Then who opened the door, Donovan?” She asked him, pushing him to recall something. Still not accusing, but needing an answer. Then she floored him. “And who brushed past me as I ran inside?”
35
Eleri had never seen Dana so mad. Then again, she hadn’t known the woman long. She did, however, see her new boss hang up the phone after talking with Westerfield and fight her own instincts to throw the phone into the wall. Eleri knew that feeling.
Right now, though she was confident they were going to get yelled at, Eleri stayed serene. She could get used to not having to be the one to explain to their Special Agent in Charge that apparently their suspect was invisible. She could not only stash her daughter where no one could find her, spark a fire around or even on a person, but she was also invisible. Ya know, like in Scooby Doo.
Eleri was still trying to wrap her head around it.
“She can’t fucking be invisible!” Dana yelled. The conference room was soundproof, supposedly.
Bethany Kellogg was back to being housed at the FBI branch building. This time she was in a double reinforced room with no electronics. The keypad entry system needed two agents with different codes to open it, and the furnishings were fireproof.
Eleri’s brain tweaked with the unkind thought that the room may be fireproof, but Bethany Kellogg wasn’t. She fought to keep her mouth from tweaking along with it.
Dana put a stop to that. She slammed her hands down on the table, startling them all and making all the tech they had scattered on the surface bounce. “The door was open. Please explain that.”
She was staring at Donovan and Eleri wanted to answer for him, but she couldn’t. It wasn’t her place.
“I can’t explain it.” He shrugged, but it was out of lack of information, not shrugging off the problem.
“There were only three of you there. Two agents and Dr. Bethany Kellogg. Who opened the door?”
“I—”
Dana didn’t let him finish. “And if she did, then how the hell did you not notice?”
“I have no answer for that. I didn’t notice anything until she screamed.” He looked beaten up. Eleri understood. No one liked Bethany Kellogg, but the failure to protect her was a personal one for Donovan nonetheless.
“How did you not notice?” Dana was looking at him. “Were you tired? Asleep on the job? What?”
This time Eleri did jump in. “He wasn’t tired. I was. He was on point. When I heard the scream, I was already somewhat facing that way.”
Dana looked at her as though she couldn’t possibly be getting in the way of anger at Donovan, but that’s exactly where Eleri was. Dana was being thorough—at least that’s the decent answer Eleri spun for herself—but enough was enough.
“The door was open before Donovan even turned to run in. He and the other agent were facing into the hallway, so it’s conceivable that Kellogg did open the door very, very subtly. It’s insanely unlikely, but it’s possible.” Eleri stood her ground. “It would, however, mean that Dr. Kellogg knew the killer was coming. Because if she did it, she opened the door and left it that way while she went back into the room to sit in the chair. She was petrified of whomever came in, so I doubt she opened the door for them. Maybe she was expecting someone else?” She paused. “Option number two, Donovan did open the door.”
“Hey!” He protested, but she steamrolled him.
“That would mean that he did it right in front of the other agent. And they each swear the other didn’t open the door.”
Dana deflated. She sank into the big conference chair, her head lolling back. “This case sucks buffalo dick.”
“Yes, it does.” Eleri conceded, noting nods from Christina and Wade.
Christina was leaned over the table, her shoulders tight, her gaze steady. Wade, on the other hand, was looking into the corner, steadily squeezing and releasing some disturbing stress ball with pop-out eyes. To someone who didn’t know him it would look like he didn’t give a shit, but Eleri knew he was thinking.
Christina offered up a solution. “If we can get the daughter, we can control Mina.”
“The daughter could be in Wyoming, or here, or anywhere.” Eleri hated to be the devil’s advocate on that, because she’d love to get her hands on the daughter, too. “Where would we start?”
“She’s here.” Christina insisted. “There were two female agents at the motel. Two. That means Mina had someone with her.”
“Could be someone she picked up off the street and paid.” Eleri countered. “Easy money.”
“Nope.” Donovan was the one who came back at her that time. “You can’t just find anyone off the street to play agent. Maybe knocking on doors? Yes. But they fooled two federal agents who had orders to stay another three hours. That’s serious business right there.”
Eleri had to concede that point. Agents were specifically trained to project that walk and attitude. It was part Law Enforcement Officer, part intellectual arrogance, part badass. “You’re right. Anybody off the street would have stuck out like a kid playing dress-up in a suit.”
Shit. Every time she found an angle, it got dismantled. Though they were all playing that “you got jack” game.
For a while, no one said anything, and finally Dana sat herself upright and looked around. “Do you want the weird news?”
“It’s not good?” Eleri deadpanned. Good news would be good. Then again, Dana wouldn’t have held onto good news this long. She wouldn’t have tried to pin the open door on Donovan if she’d had actual good news.
“Sure.” Christina offered it up, almost jolly. It was an odd state for her, out of her usual quiet, thoughtful norm. Then she topped it with a little more. “I mean if the case is gonna suck buffalo dick, why not suck weird buffalo dick?”
Oooohhhhh-kayyyyy. Maybe the other agent hadn’t slept at all.
Dana interrupted her musings. “So, Kellogg has been singing. At least this put the fear of God in her that we can’t protect her. She said Benji had an affair with Mina.”
Eleri and Donovan already knew that.
“After she married Peter.”
Whoa. That was not the original story. Eleri felt her eyes pop.
“He thinks the daughter may be his.”
Holy shit.
“So, at first, she said Mina Aroya shot her husband. But when we pressed her with the forensic evidence—Thank you, Eleri—” Dana offered a short nod her way, “—and suggested that said evidence pointed at Benjamin—”
Eleri didn’t interrupt. They all knew her evidence was simply “not likely Mina” because it had been someone taller. Bethany Kellogg didn’t need to know that.
“Kellogg copped that her brother had shot Peter Aroya. Accidentally, of course.”
“Twice,” Eleri piped up. “Some accident.”
Dana nodded, a smile coming onto her face. “She said they got into a fight over the kid, there was pushing, and Peter got shot. She said Benji panicked and shot him again, since he couldn’t leave the man injured.”
“Peter got shot?” Eleri questioned that. “It sounds almost as though she thinks Peter Aroya magnetically attracted a bullet at high speed. Benjamin Kellogg had to have brought the gun, and at least been holding it. Jesus, I hate these people. I can’t believe Bonnie is allowed in a school at all.”
Dana gave a conciliatory nod at that one. “In other news, we’ve been showing the sketches of the two women around at all the crime scenes. Everyone says ‘maybe.’ No yeses. No nos. Just ‘Maybe.’”
“That’s weird.” Wade finally looked at the group. “I was thinking—”
He didn’t get to finish, cut off by the simultaneous buzzing of all their phones. Almost as one, they looked down, pulled them out of pockets, then began accessing the secure servers on the tablets and already booted up laptops on the table.
Eleri didn’t read the accompanying text, it was the picture that grabbed her eye. Churned dirt, lumps in it, then the lumps out on a table. Knobs of long bone and some teeth. Human parts. What was left after a harsh burn.
“Where is this from?” She blurted the question out before her brain could tell her to read the report.
“In the crawlspace of the Aroya house.” Donovan told her, having apparently read the attached notes. “What’s the time of death?”
“Given the seasons, I’d guess more than a year. I can’t see fresh burn marks in the dirt.” She sighed. “I hate pictures. I’ll want to see the scene.”
“While we’ve got Mina Aroya running around here, killing people?” Dana asked her.
“She’s only trying to kill Bethany Kellogg.” Eleri countered, though she suddenly felt like a terrible person for saying it.
“Later,” was all Dana seemed willing to commit to. “Look what they found near it.”
Eleri searched through the other pictures and found her breath sucking in. A child’s bones.
“Is that a boy or a girl?” Christina was asking.
“Can’t tell,” Eleri spoke without looking up. “Skeletons don’t show sex until puberty.”
“What about the adult?” Came the next question from Christina.
“Hard to say. Pictures make it worse. But looking at the one piece—” she flipped back until she found what should be the base of the skull, then again to a sliver that was the upper part of an eye socket. “—preliminary, and very bad guess, is female.”
“They’re running DNA tests.” Dana told her. “To match to Peter and Mina Aroya, if they can.”
“Tell them to test for Kellogg,” Donovan added and Eleri nodded along. If he thought he was the father of the daughter they couldn’t find, might he also be the father of this child?
“Two more kids?” Christina was asking. “Ones who didn’t make it?”
Eleri was shaking her head, trying to analyze the bigger skeleton from the pictures of limited, burned remains. She would only be able to give a very wide age bracket. Eleri opened her mouth, only to be
stopped by a rush of noise in the hallway beyond the door.
Not that soundproof, she thought as she pieced it together. Feet. Running toward her left, behind her in the hall. More Feet. Yelling. Shit. That’s where Bethany Kellogg was.
Eleri’s own feet were pounding the hallway, her gun sliding out of its holster even before she realized she’d move. She was surprised to see Dana was in front of her, having reacted faster despite being farther from the door. Christina passed her, but it was mere moments before all five of them were part of a throng of agents—mostly in suits and ties—crowding the door to Dr. Bethany Kellogg’s holding cell.
It took Eleri only half a moment to realize what was bothering her. She heard no screams. Bethany Kellogg should be yelling her foul head off.
But she wasn’t.
Eleri pushed her head inside, smelling what she realized Donovan and Wade must have picked up down the hall.
Dana was pushing her way through the crowd, using her elbows, refusing to let go of her weapon. “This is my scene.”
In a ripple, the agents who’d gone in first rolled back, allowing Dana—and Eleri right behind her—to see the still smoking corpse on the bed. The covers were barely charred.
“Shit! Shit! Shitshitshit!”
Shockingly, the sound was from Dana’s mouth and not her own. Eleri looked again, this time aiming not to see that there was in fact a dead, burnt-crisp body on the bed, but to identify it.
Stones from rings and a diamond necklace looked like Bethany’s. It could be someone else, but that would be damned hard to pull off. Dana looked to Eleri for confirmation. Probably she already knew but was holding out hope that Eleri might say that it wasn’t Bethany, or that some switch could have been made. Eleri shook her head. They’d lost their charge.
In the FBI building. Under protection of multiple agents. Again.
Feeling her shoulders fall, Eleri turned in time to see Wade and Donovan still out in the hallway. She was wondering if they could smell Bethany’s scent even through the burn. It would be a faster identification. She was opening her mouth to ask when she saw their heads pop up in unison. Leading with their noses, both men took off at a run.
The NightShade Forensic Files: Echo and Ember (Book 4) Page 24