by Blake Pierce
“We’ve got two dead women in Baltimore—one aged forty-one, the other aged thirty-nine,” Anderson said. He finally looked away from the print-out and to his two agents. His brown eyes were full of energy and, as always, a little intimidating. “Both were stabbed multiple times in the stomach. The bureau is being called in because of the timespan between the murders. Based on the bare bones details that exist, it’s believed they were killed within twenty to twenty-four hours of one another. Obviously, there are worries that it could be a serial, but the larger boiling point is the small window of time that passed between them.”
“When was the latest victim discovered?” Rachel asked.
“Around three thirty this morning. It’s all there in the report. Because this one is two and a half hours away, I don’t need you coming back to the office. Stay in Baltimore until it’s resolved. If either of you have issues with that, let me know now and I’ll have you replaced.”
“Good to go,” Jack said.
Rachel thought about it for a moment. It would be nothing new for her to be away from home for several days. Because of her job, Peter and Paige were both used to it. Over the last three years or so, her work as an agent had caused her to stay away from home for periods of more than three days about a dozen times or so. But with her current medical news and the war that was raging in her head over whether or not to even tell her family—
“Gift?” Anderson was looking at her curiously. “You good?”
She figured taking a case that would remove her from home for a few days might actually work out in her favor. Time away from Peter and Paige as she tried to figure out what to do might be the very thing she needed. And God, she hated how absolutely selfish that made her seem.
“Yes, sir,” she said. And then, covering her tracks a bit, she added: “I’ll just need to make some calls on the way to make sure my husband and I can secure childcare while I’m away.”
“Sounds good,” Anderson said. “All of the details and case reports have been emailed or texted to you…so don’t let me waste your time. Get going.”
They did just that, leaving Anderson alone in the conference room. Jack headed out first, with Rachel trailing behind with her still-black coffee. And even heading down the hallway with Jack in front of her, she could not shake the feeling that yesterday’s prognosis was falling in behind her like a stubborn shadow.
CHAPTER SIX
Jack Rivers hated driving, but Rachel had always enjoyed it. It was yet another way their partnership was a good fit. Something about being behind the wheel and watching the roads and highways unfold in front of her was calming to Rachel. It also helped her concentrate on the case details as Jack read them, going through each and every file Anderson had sent them. Getting out of Richmond wasn’t as hard as it could have been, as they missed the morning traffic by about half an hour. The Beltway, she knew, was going to be a completely different story.
“These photos are pretty gruesome,” Jack said, wincing at the current one on his screen. “A lot of blood. Forensics reports eleven stab wounds, all in the stomach.”
“Which victim?”
“The most recent, from last night.”
“What about the first victim?” Rachel asked.
“Nine times, same place. Right in the stomach.”
Rachel tried to form a link to it all in her head. The women being slightly older helped her to categorize it a bit easier. Typically, women murdered at such an age were targets of some sort of terrible domestic abuse rather than intense and unrequited lust. But two of them so close together, and killed in similar ways, presented a whole new side of the puzzle.
“It’s also worth noting,” Rivers said, “that both women were killed at home. The first victim was laying in the kitchen, the second in her back yard. It looked like she may have fallen from the back porch…before or after she was killed, though, is anyone’s guess. She was also killed late at night, apparently when going out for a cigarette.”
Rachel did her best to stay focused on the details Jack was giving her but every ounce of mental strength she had seemed to still be digesting yesterday’s news. She was also hyper-focused on the road, as if her brain was betting on the monotonous actions and scenery to help process the information faster.
“Rachel?”
“Yeah?” she asked, quickly glancing at him. His brown eyes were studying her in a way she rarely saw. It was far too close to the way he studied victims and suspects—with a suspicious glint in his stare.
“What’s up?” he asked. “You seem pretty distracted.”
Crap, she thought. That didn’t take long.
“No, I’m okay. Just tired, I guess. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Up all night trying to make a baby with Peter?” Jack asked with a knowing chuckle.
She grimaced and shook her head. She’d almost forgotten she’d shared that bit of information with Jack. But sometimes, all the time alone in cars managed to open up a lot of personal information. She trusted Jack with her details, though. He was a very honorable guy once you got past the oddly-timed jokes and Marvel movie references.
“No. Just not a great night for sleep, I guess.”
He scowled at her and said, “I don’t buy it.”
“I didn’t ask you to,” she said, trying to inject humor she simply did not feel.
As she turned her eyes back to the road, she could sense his eyes lingering on her for a moment. She found it sort of touching that he could so easily tell that something was bothering her, but she also wished he’d drop it.
And that’s exactly what he did. He finally turned his eyes back to the digital files in front of him and only spoke when he came across something interesting. Just like that, she’d lied to her partner, too. She figured that was why she could feel the presence of the tumor in the car just as she’d felt it back at the field office. Now it sat in the back seat, leering at her, just as big a part of her work life as her home life.
Maybe I should tell Jack first, she thought. We have to trust each other with our lives, so any sort of secrecy could hurt our chemistry. It would also be a decent test-run to figure out how to tell Peter and Paige.
There was some sensibility to the thought but she still fought it hard.
“Victims were living in different parts of the city,” Jack said, breaking the thought apart. “It appears one was divorced and had recently re-married. Initial reports—and they are very initial, as the ones for the second victim are barely four hours old—indicate no links or similarities in their lives or social circles.”
“The divorce is certainly worth looking into,” she said. “I think it might be—”
The ringing of her cellphone interrupted her. Figuring it had to be either Peter or someone back at the field office, she didn’t even bother looking at the call display before answering. “This is Agent Gift.”
“Rachel Gift?” a male voice asked.
“Yes. And who is this?”
“It’s Dr. Greene. I’m very sorry for calling so early but I wanted to touch base with you before my day got away from me.”
Rachel felt like she was being caught in a lie. She felt her cheeks going red at the sound of Dr. Greene’s voice and instantly wondered if Jack could hear the doctor’s voice. She glanced in his direction quickly, but he was still looking through some of the files on his iPad.
“Well, it is rather early,” she said, hoping to quickly end the conversation without wanting to seem rude. “What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to touch base to see if you had any other questions after having the night to think it all through.”
“None right now, no.”
Her answers were coming quickly and with very little pause between his questions. There was a slight pause from his end and then a very brief sigh. “Okay. Well, if that changes, feel free to call my office and I’ll be happy to set something up. I’d love to have you come in so we can talk face-to-face about some of your options.”
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He’d barely gotten the s-sound out in options before Rachel responded. “I’ll be sure to do that. But at the risk of sounding rude, I really do need to go.”
“Of course. Enjoy your day, Mrs. Gift.”
She ended the call and placed her phone in the cupholder in the center console.
“I take it that wasn’t Anderson or anyone at the office?”
“Nope. Family stuff. Which reminds me…I need to call Peter and fill him in to sort out a babysitter and school stuff for Paige.”
Jack nodded. He was accustomed to being present for brief family-oriented calls. He even made a habit to speak with Paige every now and then if a call to her daughter during work could not be helped. She picked her phone back up and called Peter and when the phone started ringing, she could all but actually see that other presence in the back seat, the personification of her tumor, taunting her and asking how long she really thought she could keep up the lies.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Because the scene was obviously fresher, they visited the home of the second victim first. When they arrived, local PD was scattered around the back yard. The body had been moved, but the area where the victim had fallen was marked off with tape. There were also splatters of blood on the bright green grass that appeared almost startling under the morning sun.
A sickened-looking officer gave them a suspicious glance as they stepped towards the area, coming around the side of the house. Rachel showed her badge and the look dropped away; he let them into the back yard. The three other officers looked to them, an elder-looking one stepping in their direction right away.
“You with the FBI?” he asked.
“We are,” Jack said. “I’m agent Rivers, and this is Agent Gift.”
“I’m Sergeant Owen,” the elder-type said. “Glad you made it so quickly. We’re starting to worry this is going to get out of hand.”
Rachel looked back down to the ground and saw one particularly large streak of blood. The grass around the area was slightly compressed. It made her think the victim had not died right away; she’d been alive for at least a few minutes, dragging herself across the yard, likely towards the stairs.
“How long ago was the body removed?” Rachel asked as she took in the scene. The tape to mark the body was no more than two feet away from the edge of the deck. She supposed the drop was somewhere around ten feet.
“A little after six this morning,” the officer said.
“And where is the husband?”
“He’s got a sister that lives in town. She came and took him away about the same time the body was removed. He was understandably a mess.”
“Any chance you think he’s a suspect?” Jack asked.
“I never rule out a husband. He was a new husband, you know. The victim, thirty-nine-year-old Lucinda Masters, got divorced from her first husband not too long ago. She and her new husband, Kel, had only been married for four months.”
“Any other family been by?” Rachel asked.
“Lucinda’s sister was blowing up Kel’s phone earlier. She was pretty broken up, too. But no one has come by.”
“Thanks,” Rachel said. “I think we’ll just have a look around for now.”
“Help yourself,” Owen said, waving a gesturing hand at the house. “Our initial scan of the place showed no signs of break in, no signs of a struggle—nothing. We asked the husband if he could see where anything had been taken, but he was clearly not in any condition to give an accurate answer.”
Rachel and Jack walked up the back deck stairs. The lighter Lucinda Masters had apparently used to light her cigarette was still on the deck rail. It was a passing thought, but Rachel wondered if she had come outside because they simply didn’t smoke in the house, or if she was doing it in secret—hiding it from her husband.
They stepped into the house and found exactly what Owen had insinuated. The place was very clean, the only clutter coming in the form of a few dirty dishes sitting in the sink, waiting for their place in the dishwasher. Rachel checked both living room windows, then the doors; there was no sign of forced entry. They then made their way into the bedrooms and bathrooms. There was nothing to be found there, either. Yet, as Rachel looked through the bathroom and opened up the drawers along the bottom of the double sinks, she found a bottle of One A Day prenatal vitamins.
“The victim was thirty-nine, right?” Rachel asked.
“Right,” Jack answered from outside the bathroom. “Why?”
She showed him the bottle of vitamins. “I don’t know if there are many women close to forty that regularly take prenatal vitamins.”
“Yeah, but it’s not impossible, right?”
“No, I guess not,” she said, putting the vitamins back. “You know, we can look inside all we want, but we’re not going to find anything. He attacked her outside. He just walked around house and waited. That’s the feeling I’m getting anyway.”
“Waited or got there at just the right time,” Jack said. “Can’t rule out that he knew she’d be there, smoking.”
“Smoking and taking prenatal vitamins,” Rachel said. “That’s not an equation that really adds up, now is it?”
Jack shrugged and walked further down the hall. Rachel stayed in the bathroom a moment longer, trying to figure it out. She supposed the vitamins could be old—that she had not taken any of them in a while. Then again, if she’d just remarried and moved into a new home with another man, the vitamins seemed like something that would have been thrown away when she moved. The bottle had been about half empty, so she supposed trying for a kid might have been on the agenda with her new husband.
Rachel retraced her steps back through the house and walked back out onto the back porch. She saw Sergeant Owen in the yard, speaking to another officer that was typing something into his phone.
“Sergeant Owen, did the husband mention anything about doctor’s appointments?”
Owen looked up to her and shook his head sadly. “Honestly, he didn’t say much of anything. He went from absolute shock and sadness to a bitter sort of anger.”
It made sense. Rachel had seen the exact same thing in the reactions of men that had lost their wives to murder. The initial heartbreak opened a door to anger—an anger that was really, at its core, the sharpest kind of grief imaginable. If Owen’s description was correct, it made Rachel already feel that the husband wasn’t a suspect, though they’d certainly have to talk to him at some point.
Jack stepped up behind her, looking down into the yard. “Initial thoughts?”
“None yet,” Rachel said. “But I do feel that the murders being so similar and occurring so close together have to be linked somehow.”
“Want to go see what the coroner has to say?”
“Yes, and then maybe Lucinda’s husband. If he’s as wrecked over this as Owen says he is, we’ll be wasting our time going to him right now.”
As they passed back through the back yard and gave their thanks to the police, Rachel handed Sergeant Owen a business card. “When the husband is ready to talk, please give him my number.”
Sergeant Owen nodded, pocketing the card. As Rachel walked away from the scene, she realized that the time they’d spent at the Masters’ residence was the longest stretch of time she’d spent since yesterday’s doctor’s visit not intensely focused on the diagnosis. The case was already proving to be the distraction she needed. Deep down, she knew it was not healthy (neither physically or mentally) to avoid it in such a way. But for right now, she felt normal; she didn’t even feel that leering presence she’d felt in the car on the way to Baltimore, her personified version of the tumor always following her.
What she inherently understood but refused to face as she and Jack got back into the car was that at the end of this case—no matter how it turned out—she would have a grim truth to face. And there was no amount of work or exciting cases that was going to change that.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The body of Lucinda Masters lay on the examination table, telling
a brutal story. Rachel had long ago learned the lesson that the extremity of violence was rarely captured in pictures, no matter how expensive the camera or how gruesome the scene. Seeing the body with your own eyes was so much worse; it removed the filter of distance and replaced it with intimacy. It was no longer a body on a screen or a print, it was right there in front of you, a very real and bloody thing.
The coroner stood to the back of the room as Rachel and Jack observed the body. Lucinda had apparently kept in good shape; she had toned legs and arms that looked vaguely muscular. Her breasts, though obviously affected slightly by age, showed no signs that she had borne children or nursed them. Again, Rachel thought of the prenatal vitamins in Lucinda’s bathroom.
“As you can see,” the coroner said, “the cause of death is quite simple. Multiple stab wounds. Even without an official autopsy, I can look at the angle and bleed rate to determine the internal areas that were affected. Clearly, the lower abdomen was targeted, though not with any sort of precision. The stomach has been lacerated, both kidneys punctured, intestines cut in several places, and I’d suspect the uterus has also been badly damaged.”
“You said there was no real precision,” Jack said. “What makes you say that?”
Even before the coroner answered, Rachel thought she knew. Killers that knew what they were doing typically stabbed in certain areas, and they did it in a way that each stab would pierce something vital. What Rachel saw on the table in front of her was the work of a man with no clear path of attack. He’d just stabbed blindly.
It reminded her of something from her past—one of the cases that had so far defined her career. It was a case she always thought of time and time again. Whenever she allowed her mind to go there, it was accentuated with the face of a frail-looking man staring at her through thick glasses, a smile on his face that chilled her.