BEFORE HE NEEDS

by Blake Pierce

  “Okay, so let’s say you’re not connected with these murders. What are you guilty of? I’m assuming you’re doing something you shouldn’t. Why else would you push me, an FBI agent, and try to run?”

  “I’m not talking,” he said. “Not until I see a lawyer.”

  “Ah, I forget you’re a pro at this game by now. So yeah, fine…we’ll get you your lawyer. But I assume you also know how the police work. We know you’re guilty of something. And we’re going to find out what it is. So tell me now and save everyone some trouble.”

  His five straight seconds of silence indicated that he intended to do no such thing.

  “I’m going to need the names and the numbers of the men you claim to have been with two nights ago. Give me those and if your alibi checks out, you’re free to go.”

  “Fine,” Nell grunted.

  His reaction to this was yet another sign that he was likely innocent of the murders. There was no instant relief on his face, just a sort of annoyed irritation that he had somehow once again found himself back in an interrogation room.

  Mackenzie took the names of the men down and noted for Dagney or whoever was in charge of such things to scroll through Nell’s cell phone for their numbers. She left the interrogation room and headed back into observation.

  “Well?” Rodriguez said.

  “He’s not our guy,” Mackenzie said. “But just for protocol, here’s a list of his friends he says he was with on the night the Kurtzes were murdered.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  She nodded.

  “There was no real relief when I told him he could likely leave after his alibi checked out. And I tried to get a rise out of him, to trip him up. His behavior simply is not indicative of a guilty party. But like I said, we should check the accomplices just to be sure. Nell is sure as hell guilty of something. I’ve got a sore backside from falling down to prove it. Think your guys can figure out what it is?”

  “You got it.”

  She left the station, confident that Mike Nell was not their man. Somewhere beyond that, though, she started to think of her father.

  She supposed it was bound to happen. There were a few similarities between his case and the current case she was on. Someone had come into the couples’ homes with no signs of forced entry, insinuating that the couples knew the killer and let him in willingly. She caught flashes of her father, sprawled bloody on the bed, as she recalled the images she’d seen of the Kurtzes and Sterlings in the case files.

  Thinking of a deceased parent made her feel more strongly for Harrison’s situation. She got to the motel as quickly as she could, yet when she knocked on his door, he did not answer. Mackenzie walked to the front desk and found a bored-looking receptionist thumbing through a Star magazine.

  “Excuse me, but did my partner leave?”

  “Yes, he left about five minutes ago. I called him a cab to take him to the airport.”

  “Thank you,” Mackenzie said, deflated.

  She left the front office feeling strangely alienated. Sure, she’d been on a few cases alone before, especially when working as a detective in Nebraska. But being in a strange city without a partner made her feel particularly alone. It made her feel slightly uneasy but there was no use in trying to ignore it.

  With that sense of displacement growing by the second, Mackenzie figured she’d put a stop to it the only way she knew how: by drowning herself in work. She got back into her car and went directly back to the station, thinking that while pursuing the case alone might be a bit depressing, it could also be just the motivation she needed to find the killer before the day came to a close.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Her motivation to bring the killer in on her own was quickly muted by a lack of answers and several hours that felt absolutely wasted back at the station. She sat in a small spare office provided by Rodriguez as the few scant updates came in. The first update was that after less than three hours, every single one of Mike Nell’s accomplices had panned out. There was now evidence from multiple sources that Nell had been nowhere near the Kurtz townhouse on the night of the murders.

  However, those same three hours also had Miami PD locate two pounds of heroin hiding in a small secret compartment of his truck. A few calls also proved that he had meetings to sell it, one of which was to a customer who was only fifteen years of age.

  The second update was a bit more useful but really provided very little to go on. Two of the initialed entries within the Sterlings’ checkbook that Mackenzie had not recognized were accounted for. One was a local animal shelter, to which they had made contributions twice a year. Another had been a small grassroots political campaign, and the other was still a mystery.

  With the other two eliminated, Mackenzie was able to focus on the remaining one. The initials in question were DCM. Joey Nestler was the officer who brought her the results of the first two, and before he could leave her tiny working space, Mackenzie stopped him.

  “Officer Nestler, do you have any idea what these initials might mean? Are there any businesses, organizations, or even individuals in the city that these might apply to?”

  “I’ve been wondering that myself ever since we got the results,” he said. “But I’m coming up with nothing. We’ve got some guys working on it, though. We’re also looking over the Kurtzes’ financial records to see if there’s any sort of connection.”

  “Great work,” she said.

  Nestler left her alone after that. She then turned her attention back to the crime scene photos. It was weird, but the vast amount of blood in both photos was not what unsettled her the most. There was something even more gruesome about the way the bodies had been arranged. As far as she was concerned, there was no question that the bodies had been moved and staged to be lying on their backs. With the evidence of a struggle of some sort having occurred at the Sterling residence, it was all but a given that the scenes had been purposefully set up.

  But why?

  She kept looking at the posturing of the hands. What’s he trying to tell us? That the couples are linked somehow? Is he highlighting the couples’ need for one another?

  She was fairly certain that there was some sort of symbolism in the posing of the hands in both photos: in the Kurtz photo, Julie’s hand was touching her husband’s thigh, almost draped lovingly over it; in the Sterling photo, it was Gerald Sterling’s hand draped over his wife’s thigh.

  There’s no way that’s an accident, Mackenzie thought.

  But what does it mean?

  She studied each and every picture from the crime scenes but could find nothing. So rather than trying to find something new, she started to go back over things they knew for certain. By eliminating the obvious things, it at least made the list for motive a little shorter.

  These murders were not just routine home invasions.

  Nothing stolen. No immediate signs of forced entry.

  These seemed like obvious facts but they spoke volumes. The murders were not about money, so theft could be eliminated (and was one of the main reasons Mackenzie had been so easily able to dismiss Mike Nell). And as far as she could tell they weren’t blatantly about sex, either.

  She kept going back to the positioning of the hands.

  There has to be something to it, something there. He’s killing couples and making sure their bodies touch just the slightest bit. What am I missing?

  As she wracked her brain over this, a knock came to her door. She looked up and saw Rodriguez standing there.

  “Hell, White…you used to working long hours?”

  Mackenzie looked at her watch, shocked to see that it had somehow come to be seven in the evening. She stretched her back in the chair and closed the files in front of her.

  “Yeah, time tends to sneak up on me from time to time.”

  “Well, I’m obviously not your boss but why not call it a day? There’s really nothing much you can do here. Although we did just now make a possible connection. The DCM listing in the Sterlings�
�� checkbook is probably a reference to a private club. And the thing of it is, we can’t figure out what it stands for. As far as we know, there’s no meaning to it—just three letters.”

  “What kind of club?” Mackenzie asked.

  “It’s a private club. But the general consensus is it’s just sort of this well-to-so socialite crap. You pay a fee every so often and get to hang out with other snobby people to drink expensive wine or use a dance floor that no one else in the city can use.”

  “Do we have contact information?” she asked.

  “Just a website that gives a phone number. But we’ve tried calling it and can’t get an answer.”

  “Can you send me the link?” she asked.

  “Absolutely. Now…seriously. Call it a night. We can all work together tomorrow to dig into this DCM place. The assumption is that whatever number is on the site is simply not being answered after business hours.”

  It sounded like a good idea. And while she’d no doubt do some investigating of her own during the night on a club named DCM, she realized that with time having slipped away from her, she was pretty hungry. Dinner, maybe a drink, and then she’d look into the website and club.

  She left the station and headed back to the motel. During the drive there, the weight of being on her own on the case in an unfamiliar city once again settled on her. It wasn’t just the sense of being on her own to solve a case, but being alone period. Something about it here, in a strange city with only people she didn’t know at all to assist her, was rather sad in a way she could not describe.

  Might as well play the part of the loner, she thought as she turned into the parking lot of a Papa John’s. She went inside, ordered a pizza, and then walked across the parking lot to a Kroger while she waited. She picked up a six-pack of beer and a bag of chips. When she went through the self-checkout line, she felt more domesticated and depressed than she had ever since coming to Quantico.

  As she walked back to pick up her pizza with her bagged six-pack of Dos Equis in hand, a comical thought crossed her mind.

  I wonder what McGrath would think of me if he saw me right now. Then, on the heels of that: If there’s a Heaven and Bryers is looking down on me right now, what is he thinking?

  With a thin smile at that thought, she picked up her pizza and returned to the motel. She changed into comfortable clothes—a T-shirt and a pair of shorts—and opened the pizza on the table by her bed. She then opened up her laptop. She nearly started working but an idea crept into her head—a freeing idea that surprised her but was very enticing.

  She placed the laptop and one of the beers on top of the pizza box, the beer lying on its glass side. She picked it all up and then left the room again but this time, she walked to the side and to a small sidewalk she had spied earlier when dropping Harrison off. She walked down this sidewalk a bit, listening to the sound of crashing waves from directly ahead. A few more feet brought her to the rear of the motel and the surrounding buildings. A wide wooden walkway separated the buildings from the beach down below.

  She started out at the water as she made her way down to the sand. She kicked off her shoes and socks, carrying them awkwardly with the pizza, beer, and laptop. She loved the way the sand felt on her toes; it was nearly hypnotic, easily one of the best sensations she had felt in a very long time.

  She located an empty wooden bench tucked away beside a small dune of sand and took a seat there. A few palm trees towered overhead and for the briefest of moments, she felt like she had escaped the world and was on some dreamlike vacation.

  She was still about fifty yards from the ocean, but that was fine. The sound and smell of it was enough for her, as was the ocean breeze that crept up the beach. She popped open her beer, started on a slice of pizza, and then cracked open the laptop.

  She typed in the link Rodriguez had texted her and was taken to a simple website. The connection was slow, as she was nearly out of the motel’s Wi-Fi range, but the browser eventually took her where she needed to go. The site came up without bells and whistles. There was just a plain background with very little copy. No additional pages or dropdowns.

  The copy read: DCM. A private club. Invite only. Inquiries refer to 786.555.6869.

  It seemed pointless to even have a page if that was all the information that was going to be provided. She of course knew that with a bit of time and effort, someone with coding expertise could find out the source of the site and maybe even who owned and operated it. But she knew that there was not nearly enough suspicion about DCM just yet to warrant such a search. A few entries in the checkbook of a deceased couple could mean nothing—and probably did.

  Still, the lack of any real information on the site did make her wonder. It seemed a little too suspicious for her. She nearly called up Rodriguez to see if he could get a team working on it right away but decided against it. She didn’t want to come in rocking the boat, especially now that she was by herself, running the show alone.

  With two slices of pizza and her first beer down, Mackenzie closed the lid of her laptop. The sky was growing dark, the ocean taking on a beautiful yet eerie quality. She was tempted to bring the rest of the beers out here, drink them by herself by the beach, and get a good buzz before retiring for the night. Yet the responsible side of her knew that it was nearly nine o’clock and she needed to get as much sleep as possible while the case had yet to pick up steam. Rotating her neck to loosen up the muscles in her shoulders, she bid the ocean a fond farewell and walked back to the motel.

  Back in her room, she waited a moment to wash the sand from her feet. It was a good feeling—almost something childlike about it. After a while, though, she stripped down and allowed herself a nice, long shower.

  While the hot water felt incredible and it was an overall peaceful experience, her mind would not clear. Honestly, her mind was never at rest or all clear. Even when she was relaxed and easygoing, there was always one thing remaining constant in the back of her mind: her father’s case.

  She’d felt for a few months now that somehow, she would be the one to close his case. Ever since it had been reopened and she had been given something of an inside peek into it, she’d felt like it was her case—that she should have ownership of it. And while McGrath was being lenient enough to let her have a mostly open view toward it, she understood completely why he could not assign it to her.

  Besides, it looked as if there was a dead end waiting for her yet again. That damned Barker Antiques business card haunted her like a ghost from a haunted house she’d never get to visit.

  She remained under the water until it started to go cold. She got out, wrapped a towel around her, and walked back out into the room, where she opened another beer. Just as she was about to swap out the towel for her night attire of a T-shirt and underwear, a knock sounded at the door.

  It was such an unexpected sound that she nearly dropped her beer. Confused, she hurried to the door and looked through the peephole.

  What the hell?

  She looked again, just to make sure she had seen the person out there correctly.

  She was so surprised that she didn’t think clearly enough when she unlocked the chain and started opening the door. She did not realize that she was still in nothing but a towel until the chilled night air curled against her mostly bare and still slightly wet legs.

  With the door open, there was no mistaking the identity of the person who had knocked. There was no peephole to distort their features.

  She stood there, still shocked, with the door partially open.

  Ellington stood on the other side with a shocked look on his face—another late reminder that she was wearing only a towel.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  Ellington smiled at her. “Being overdressed, apparently.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mackenzie allowed him inside, still not understanding what Ellington was doing there. She also had no idea why she could not unstick the logical part of her mind and rush to the bathroom t
o put on some damn clothes.

  This man should not throw you off so badly, she thought to herself.

  That was true. But she could not deny that seeing him made her feel happier than it should. She was overjoyed to see him—a joy that grew stronger than the confusion of the moment by the second.

  “McGrath sent me out shortly after he received the message about Harrison’s mother and his return to Quantico,” Ellington explained.

  “He didn’t waste any time then, did he?”

  “No. And before we get any further into this, I need to point out that given our past, I’d find this conversation a lot easier to have if you’d put on some clothes.”

  He did not say it in a mean or disrespectful way. He was being polite. More than that, she saw something else in his eyes—an almost adolescent sort of embarrassment. He wanted to take in what he was seeing—her body covered only from the tops of her breasts to the very tops of her thighs—but did not want to come off as being rude.

  “Sorry,” she said. “One second.”

  She retrieved her clothes from the end of the bed, adding a pair of jeans from her suitcase. She then quickly went into the bathroom. As she crossed in front of him, she saw him looking at her. It made her feel sexy, something she had not felt in quite some time.

  She slipped into the bathroom, quickly closing the door behind her. She dried her hair a bit more with a towel before putting on her clothes. “There’s pizza and beer,” she called through the door. “Help yourself.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll take you up on the beer.”

  With her hair as dry as she could get it without a blow dryer, she reached for her clothes. She hesitated for a moment, looking at the door. A thought raced through her mind like a hurricane. She’d had a similar thought before and it had turned out very badly. He’d not necessarily rejected her—he had simply been trying to do the right thing.