Before He Takes

by Blake Pierce

  “I almost did,” she said. “But they’d put it all together so well…I didn’t want to step on any toes. This whole thing of a cooperative police department bending over backwards for us is new to me. I’ll get to it tomorrow. If it was crucial or important, they’ve either already checked them or they would have at least mentioned it to us.”

  Ellington nodded and took a gulp of his beer. “Hell, I nearly forgot,” he said. “I was sorry as hell to hear about Bryers. I only worked with him a few times and it wasn’t in a close capacity. But he seemed to be a genuinely nice man. One hell of an agent, too, from what I hear.”

  “Yeah, he was pretty awesome,” Mackenzie said.

  “I don’t know if you’d want to know this or not,” Ellington said, “but there was quite a bit of controversy about pairing you with him when you came in. Bryers was something of a hot commodity. One of the best. But when the idea was given to him, he was all for it. I think deep down, he always wanted to be a mentor. And I think he got a good one for his first try.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “But I don’t quite feel as if I’ve proven myself just yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well…I don’t know. Maybe it will hit me when I can wrap a case without getting McGrath pissed off at me over some detail or another.”

  “He only does it because he expects so much out of you. You came in like this fuse on a stick of dynamite that had already been lit.”

  “Is that why he has me partnering with you right now?”

  “No. I think he just wanted me on this because of my connection with the Omaha field office. And between you and me and no one else, he wants you to succeed on this one. He wants you to knock it out of the park. With me on board, you won’t be able to resort to one of your patented solo endings that you’re so prone to.”

  She wanted to argue this point but she knew he was right. So instead, she drank from her beer. The jukebox was now churning out Bryan Adams and somehow, she was ordering her second beer.

  “So tell me,” Mackenzie said. “If I wasn’t on this one with you, how would you be handling it? What approaches?”

  “Same as you. Working closely with the PD and trying to make friends. Taking notes, coming up with theories.”

  “And do you have any?” she asked.

  “None that you didn’t already nail in that conference room. I’m thinking we’re onto something…thinking of this guy as a collector of sorts. A bashful loner. I feel pretty safe in saying he’s not getting these women just to kill them. I think you’re exactly right on all those points.”

  “The thing that gets under my skin,” Mackenzie said, “is thinking of all of the other reasons he would be kidnapping and collecting women.”

  “Did you notice that Sheriff Bateman kept a female officer in the room the whole time?” Ellington asked.

  “Yeah. Roberts. I assumed it was to keep the conversation centered on the facts and not speculations. Speculations regarding why the suspect would be keeping women. Talking about rape and sexual abuse is a little easier when there isn’t a woman around.”

  “That kind of stuff bother you?” Ellington asked.

  “It used to. Sadly, I’ve gotten almost jaded about it. It doesn’t bother me anymore.” This wasn’t one hundred percent true, but she didn’t want Ellington to know it. The truth of the matter was that it was often things like these that drove her to be the absolute best she could be.

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?” he asked. “That part of your humanity that sort of becomes numb to things like this?”

  “Yeah, it does,” she said. She hid herself behind her beer for a moment, a little shocked that Ellington had just taken such a step. It had been a small step for him but it also showed a degree of vulnerability.

  She finished her beer and slid it to the edge of the bar. When the bartender came over, she waved him off. “I’m good,” she said. Then, turning to Ellington, she said: “You said you were paying, right?”

  “Yeah, I got it. Hold on a second and I’ll walk you to your room.”

  The slight excitement she felt at this comment was embarrassing. To stop it in its tracks before she could even entertain it, she shook her head. “Not necessary,” she said. “I can take care of myself.”

  “I know you can,” he said, sliding his own empty glass toward the edge of the bar. “Another for me,” he told the bartender.

  Mackenzie waved to him as she made her way out. As she walked across the parking lot, that small and eager part of her couldn’t help but wonder what it might be like to walk back to the motel with Ellington by her side, pushed forward by the uncertainty that would await them once the doors were closed and the blinds were drawn.

  ***

  It took less than twenty minutes for the sting of lust to subside. As usual, she used work to distract herself from such lures. She opened up her laptop and went directly to her e-mail. There, she found several e-mails that had been sent to her by the Bent Creek PD over the last half a day or so—just another way they were starting to spoil her, really.

  They had provided maps of the area, the only four missing persons reports within the area over the last ten years, the traffic analysis conducted by the state of Iowa in 2012, and even a list of all arrests made in the last five years that involved subjects with a history of assault. Mackenzie pored through it all, taking a bit of extra time to look at the four missing persons cases.

  Two of them were assumed to have been runaways and after reading the reports, Mackenzie agreed. They could both be used as a template for angst-ridden teenagers who were tired of small-town life, leaving home earlier than their parents would have liked. One of them was a fourteen-year-old girl who had actually contacted her family two years ago to let them know she was living quite comfortably in Los Angeles.

  The other two were a little harder to understand, though. One case involved a ten-year-old boy who had been abducted from a church playground. He’d been missing for three hours before anyone even raised much of a fuss about it. Local gossip mills suggested it was the grandmother who took him because of a hairy family situation. The family drama, plus the gender and age of the victim, made Mackenzie doubt there was any connection to the current kidnappings.

  The fourth case was more promising but still seemed a little thin. The first red flag was that it involved a car accident. In 2009, Sam and Vicki McCauley had been run off of the road during an ice storm. When police and the ambulance arrived, Sam was barely alive and died on the way to the hospital. He had begged to know how his wife was. From what they could tell, Vicki McCauley had been thrown from the vehicle, but her body had never been found.

  Mackenzie looked through the report twice and could not find any descriptions of what had caused the car to leave the road. The term icy road conditions was used several times and while that was a good reason, Mackenzie thought it might be a good idea to go deeper. She went through the report several times and then reread Delores Manning’s report. The fact that there was a car accident of some kind seemed to be the only connection between the two.

  She then shifted gears and tried to weave the current three victims into those scenarios. It was nearly impossible, though. The two unexplained cases were assumed runaways and while both were female, it left far too many options open. More than that, the three current victims were taken from their cars. Maybe because being stranded on the road was a fairly common occurrence. It was a far cry from nabbing a teenage runaway. It simply didn’t fit.

  This guy doesn’t want runaways or troubled teens that storm out to get a rise out of mom and dad. He’s going after women. Women that are, for some reason or another, out in their cars at night. Maybe he realizes the hope that the apparent kind stranger instills in people—women especially.

  On the flip side of that, though, was the fact that she knew most women would assume the worst of a strange man on the side of the road. Especially when their cars were busted and it was dark.

  Maybe they know him, then…r />
  That seemed like a stretch, too. From the information they had gathered from Tammy and Rita Manning, Delores likely didn’t know anyone in Bent Creek.

  She went back to the McCauleys’ case, mainly because it was the only one with even the thinnest thread of similarity to it. She pulled her e-mail back up and opened the most recent mail from the Bent Creek PD. She replied to it and wrote:

  Thanks so much for the help. I was wondering if I could get a few other things as soon as possible. I’d like to get a list of family members related to the McCauleys that live within a fifty-mile radius, along with contact information. If you have the number for Delores Manning’s agent, that would be great, too.

  She felt almost lazy requesting the information in such a way. But if they were offering to help so effortlessly, she wanted to use the Bent Creek PD as a resource as much as she could.

  With that done, Mackenzie opened up another file…a file that she had managed to tuck away and not obsess over for nearly three weeks now. She opened it up, cycled through the files, and pulled up a single photograph.

  It was a business card with her father’s name scrawled on the back. On the other side, showed in another photo, was a business name in bold lettering: Barker Antiques: Old or New Rare Collectibles.

  And that was it. She already knew that no such place existed—not as far as she or the FBI could tell—which made it all the more frustrating. She eyed the card and felt a pull at her heart. She was about two and a half hours away from the place her father had died and maybe three hours away from where the business card in the photo had been found—nearly twenty years after her father’s death.

  It was not her case…not really. McGrath had given her something of an under-the-table pass at assisting when she could but so far, the case had remained cold. She thought of Kirk Peterson, the detective who had uncovered the new clues that had reopened her father’s case. She nearly called him up but realized that it had somehow gotten to be 11:45. And besides that, what would they talk about other than the silence coming from the current and reopened cases?

  But she needed to call him. Maybe after this case, when she could give Peterson and the case her full attention. It was about time she got that damned monkey off of her back.

  She readied herself for bed, brushing her teeth and changing into a thin pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. Just before she settled into bed, she checked her phone one last time for any late incoming mails.

  She saw that her e-mail request for information from the Bent Creek PD had already been responded to, having come in a mere seventeen minutes after she had sent it. She jotted the information down in her files and made a mental schedule for the following day. She then finally allowed herself to turn off the lights and go to bed.

  She did not like ending a day and turning out the lights on unanswered questions. It was an unsettling feeling that she supposed she’d never get used to. But she had adapted long ago, finding a way to sleep a few fitful hours while the answers to her questions lurked in the darkness of night comfortably out of her grasp.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Mackenzie had just finished getting dressed when someone knocked on the door of her motel room. She checked through the peephole and saw Ellington standing there. He was holding a small cardboard box with two cups of coffee perched on top. She opened the door and let him in, not sure how to feel about him being ready for the day before her. She had always prided herself on her promptness and her tendency to be early. It now looked like she might have some competition in that area.

  “Am I interrupting the complicated morning flow of a woman getting ready?” he joked as he set the box and the coffees down on the small table by her already-made bed.

  “No, I just finished up,” she said, gladly taking the coffee.

  Ellington flipped the box open and revealed half a dozen donuts. “Sure, it’s a cliché,” he said. “But damn…is there anything better than fresh donuts?”

  In response, she picked one up and took a bite.

  “So what’s today look like?” he asked.

  “Why are you asking me?”

  He shrugged and took up his own donut. “Let’s shoot straight, White. I know enough about you to know that you work better when you’re in control. That’s not to say that you aren’t a good backup or partner. But facts are facts. I have no problem with you running things here. I want to see you shine just as much as McGrath. So, I repeat my question: What’s today look like?”

  “Well, I looked through the missing persons cases over the last ten years last night,” Mackenzie answered. “There was only one case that was worth looking into—a car accident during an ice storm where a woman was thrown from the car and her body was never found. Vicki McCauley.”

  “How long ago was this?” Ellington asked.

  “It happened in 2009. I got the information for a single family member within the area and think it might be worth looking into. I also want to give Delores Manning’s agent a call. Maybe they know personal details about her life that might help us. The fact that Manning has family so close to the areas where the disappearances are occurring makes me think her personal life might be worth looking into.”

  “Well then, let’s get to it,” Ellington said.

  Mackenzie checked her phone and saw that it was 7:50. She grinned at him and sipped from her coffee. It was black, which she usually didn’t care for, but she wasn’t going to complain.

  “You’re a morning person, huh?” she said.

  “It depends on the case. The more answers there are to find, the easier it is for me to roll out of bed.”

  “Well, seeing as how we have a grand total of no answers for this one, I guess you were up very early this morning.”

  He gave a nod and took a gulp of his coffee as they headed out of her room and to the parking lot. As they got into the car—Ellington in the driver’s seat and Mackenzie already pulling up the number for Delores Manning’s agent—Mackenzie thought Ellington was on to something. It was a bit easier to hit the ground running when there were no answers at their disposal. The sense that there was something to be discovered out there that could lead them to the three missing women made the morning seem a little more promising. And it made her all the more anxious to get to work.

  ***

  When Mackenzie got Harriett Wheeler on the phone, she knew right away that she had woken the woman up. Wheeler, who had been Delores Manning’s agent for the last four years, sounded tired and cranky when she answered the phone on the fourth ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Ms. Wheeler. This is Agent Mackenzie White with the FBI. I was wondering if you might be able to answer a few questions for me.”

  “About Delores, I assume?”

  “Yes, about Delores. I apologize for the early call, but as I’m sure you understand, time is of the essence.”

  “Yes, I get that. I jumped at the phone just now because I was kind of hoping you’d be a policeman or maybe even Delores herself to tell me everything was good now. But I assume she’s still missing?”

  “Yes. So any new information you can provide is going to help us find her much faster.”

  “Well, I already spoke to the police.”

  “I know. My main question concerns people Delores knew. For instance, did you know that her family lived out here in Iowa?”

  “I did, but she never really talked about them. I got the feeling that she was sort of ashamed of her family situation.”

  That’s easy to believe, Mackenzie thought, recalling the visit to the trailer park yesterday.

  “Did anyone else know that she was making this trip?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Just the bookstores she was signing at and our PR guys. But they’ve been here in the office for the last week.”

  “How long had Delores been out traveling?”

  “Four days. She started in Nebraska, then went to Iowa, and then she had a signing scheduled in Chicago. After that, it was back to New York.”

/>   “Was anyone traveling with her?”

  “No. She loved to drive herself on these trips. This would have been her third trek across most of the country to do these signings. Outside of the actual writing, I think it was her favorite part of the job.”

  “Are there any enemies you can think of? Maybe even just competition in terms of writing or sales?”

  “Not at all,” Wheeler said. “Delores really is a sweetheart. If she had any enemies, they stayed quiet and I never knew about them.”

  With that, Mackenzie’s line of questions ran dry. It had gone pretty much as expected. Wheeler knew just enough about Delores to say they had a comfortable working relationship. Outside of that, there was no real connection.

  “Well, thank you for your time. And please call me right away if anything comes to mind.”

  “Of course,” Wheeler said. “Thank you.”

  Mackenzie ended the call and looked out the window. They had already started passing by the forests of Bent Creek, headed to another small town half an hour away.

  “Nothing good with the agent?” Ellington asked.

  “No,” Mackenzie said. “She did say that Delores had done three trips across the country for book signings, though. So she was something of a seasoned traveler. I assume that means secondary roads really didn’t scare her.”

  “So no real information to use there,” Ellington said.

  “Not really,” Mackenzie said. “So…next up is the McCauley family member. The only information we have is that it’s Vicki McCauley’s aunt, but through a blended family situation.”

  “So you think that’s going to be grasping at straws, too?” Ellington asked.

  “I guess we’ll just have to see.”

  The car fell into silence and stayed that way for about ten minutes. Mackenzie could feel the beginnings of conversations stirring in the car but they never came to anything. This was fine with her; she and Bryers had never really mastered the art of small talk, either. If Ellington was anything like her (and she was beginning to find that he was in a lot of ways), he was simply running the facts of the case through his head, processing as he drove.