The Thrill List

by Catherine Lea

She gasped and began to shake. She had to call 911. Pushing herself up from the chair, she realized what had just occurred. Gayle had poisoned her.

  The china plate dropped from her hand and crashed onto the tiled deck. The peach-faced lovebird sitting on top of the fountain stared at Portense with bright black eyes.

  Looking at the bird, Hortense let out a long moan. “Todd.”

  THE END

  MEET ARTHUR KERNS

  Arthur Kerns is a retired FBI supervisory special agent with a career in counterintelligence and counterterrorism. After retirement he served as a consultant to the intelligence community traveling to over 65 countries. He spent a year studying Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. A past president of the Arizona chapter of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) his award-winning short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies. He is a book reviewer for the Washington Independent Review of Books.

  Diversion Books, Inc. NY, NY published his espionage thriller, The Riviera Contract, and the sequel, The African Contract. The third in the series, The Yemen Contract, was just recently released.

  Find Arthur at http://www.diversionbooks.com

  See more in author’s website, www.arthurkerns.com

  If I Were A Carpenter

  by

  CAT CONNOR

  Conway’s laughter tinkled from my phone. “How’re you enjoying being sole SSA of Delta A and temporary SSA of Delta B?”

  “Claude can come home any time,” I said. “Delta B is not like Delta A.” I leaned forward and read an email that arrived on my screen. There was no other team like Delta A. Conway bound us together so tightly we almost thought as a single entity at times. “You could come home too. We just got an invitation to a new case.”

  “Interesting?”

  “How quickly can you and Lee wrap up the investigation in Richmond?”

  “We’re almost done, just report writing now.” She paused. “We were planning to head home tomorrow.” I could hear her mind working. “Is the new case that interesting?”

  “Yeah, yeah, it is.” I read the email again before speaking. Very interesting. “I think we’re looking at a serial killer in Northern Virginia.”

  “We’re coming. Be there tonight,” Conway said, sparks ignited her voice. “Where’s Sam?”

  A shadow loomed in my doorway.

  “About to walk into my office.”

  “Accept the case. We’ll hit the road in about two hours. See you tonight.”

  “Stay safe.” I hung up and called out to the shadow that hovered. “Yo, Sam. We got a new case.”

  The reason for the hover waved as she walked down the corridor. I waved back. Special Agent Sandra Sinclair. Sam and Sandra had a thing going. Made Conway and I laugh, often, how they thought no one knew. You’d have to be blind not to see it.

  Sam rocked into the room and grabbed a chair. He set it close to my desk and sat down.

  “‘Sup Kurt?”

  “A serial killer,” I replied on a rush of air. “Take a look.” I spun the laptop to face him.

  A few minutes later, he looked over the screen at me and nodded.

  “Ellie know?”

  “Yes. Her and Lee are on their way back later today.”

  “You and me until then? What about Delta B and their messy morning?”

  I planted my hands flat on the desk and pushed myself to my feet. “I’m about to go light a fire under their asses. Agent Manning is investigating the response time. The rest of the team are supposed to be investigating the shooter and tracking him down.”

  “He got away?” Sam rocked in his chair and shook his head.

  “Yes.”

  “Why was there no armed response from within the building?”

  “Conway asked the same question. It’s on the list.”

  “So they let the shooter get away?”

  “Yeah. And get this for team behavior. They sent Manning in here to try and explain what happened. All of them should have fronted up, but they tossed Manning to the wolves. She’s the newest member, right?”

  “Yeah, she is. She’s been with B for three months.” Sam shook his head. “They always this useless?”

  I puffed air out my mouth. “I really hope not, but then, I don’t want to think they’ve fallen over because I’m a crap SSA.”

  Sam’s throaty laugh bounced around the room. “This isn’t about you. This is about how they operate as a team. They’re not cohesive.” Sam let his chair fall back to the ground and propelled himself to his feet. “This is on Claude.”

  I smiled. “Thanks, but, I’m in charge at the moment, so, it’s on me.”

  “We’ll see. Gimme a minute with Delta B. You do what you do and accept the case.”

  I sat back down. Happy to work on something for our team and let Sam have a word with Delta B. I wasn’t enjoying the experience of being their SSA. With that thought in mind, I called Claude.

  “Hey, It’s Kurt Henderson,” I said as soon as he answered.

  “Kurt, what do you need?”

  “Delta A got a new case. All hands on deck type of case. When can we expect you back in the office?”

  “Three or four days.”

  I restrained the sigh that tried to escape. Three or four days. Visions of being stuck behind a desk holding Delta B’s hand while Delta A worked a case swam into focus. That didn’t make me happy. Three or four days more of Delta B’s screw-ups didn’t thrill me. I flipped it.

  A challenge.

  Could I turn Delta B into cohesive unit in the time I had?

  Yes. I could.

  “All right. See you then.”

  “Sorry Kurt, I know leaving your team isn’t easy.”

  “Cheers.”

  I put my phone on my desk and breathed. A challenge. I needed to find the best way to tackle the problem. Sam’s pep talk would probably do some good. What else? I couldn’t leave them unsupervised, that was obvious. A plan hatched. Team Delta B with Delta A. Re-training. Team building. Some example setting.

  All good things for a team that wasn’t working. I fired an email to Conway and told her of my plan. We shared the supervisory role within Delta A. Our specialist team contained two supervisory agents, two senior agents and a shared support agent. The other Delta teams contained one SSA, five special agents with support provided by Sandra and another agent who worked with her. B and C had a high turnover of agents but Delta A had existed in its current form for almost five years. We were close. We were a unit. We worked hard, we played hard, and we won more often than not. All that made us unique in the criminal investigative division.

  * * *

  I swung through the employee entrance carrying a takeout tray of coffees and took the elevator to the fourth floor. Voices buzzed from the office down the hall. A pool of light fell from the open door onto the corridor carpet. I knew the voices. Sam, Lee and Conway were all in the office.

  “Welcome back,” I said. The conversation stopped as I entered. “Coffee?” I set the tray on the desk and passed the coffees around.

  “Thanks,” Conway said with a smile. “Good timing.”

  I smiled. “Glad you got back okay.”

  She took the lid off her cup and watched steam curl toward the ceiling. When she finished watching the spiraling steam, she looked over at me. The lack of spark in her blue eyes meant tiredness. I made a mental note.

  “Thanks, Kurt. How are the B’s getting on?” Definitely tired but that didn’t stop the amusement rising in her eyes.

  “Sent them home,” I replied, sipping my coffee. “Told them to be ready for tomorrow. They’re going to have to step up their game and fast. I want to shooter captured and they need to be working alongside us.”

  “They know this?”

  “Yep.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “How many resigned?”

  “Only one. I refused to accept her resignation.”

  Conway laughed. Sam and Lee grinned.

 
“Was the kid, yeah?” Sam asked. “Agent Manning?”

  I nodded.

  Conway shook her head. “She’s good, or at least she has potential to be so. What did you do to her?”

  “The other four idiots threw her to the wolves.”

  “Ah,” Conway said. “Put her with me tomorrow, yeah?”

  “Absolutely,” I replied. She sure wouldn’t be happy if she thought she was going to be teamed with me.

  “Do you have an answer regarding building security? Conway asked.

  I sighed. “I do. Budget cuts. Apparently the Department of Agriculture offices housed there are low risk.”

  “No security at all?”

  “Unmanned non-operational metal detectors. No security personnel.” It was difficult to keep the derision from my voice.

  “Anything on the shooter at all?”

  “BOLO out. Clear CCTV images. He’s the husband of a disgruntled employee.”

  “At least they had CCTV,” Conway said suppressing a yawn. “B get that information?”

  “No. I did. Took me thirty minutes as far as I know they have no clue.”

  “They’re hopeless,” she said with a scowl. “They’re going to need a lot of team strengthening and skill reinforcement.”

  “Want to do the briefing now?”

  Conway nodded. “I want to visit the crime scenes and get started on this before tomorrow.”

  Of course she did. Workaholic.

  “You need sleep,” I said, quietly.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll sleep.” She shot me a wonderful smile. “But first, brief us then let’s get a look at the crime scenes. If this is the work of a serial killer then time is ticking.”

  I briefed the team. We finished the brief and our coffees at the same time.

  “Ride with me, Conway,” I said. Holstering my weapon.

  That’s how we usually worked, Lee and Sam, Conway and me. It was comfortable and that way. I liked to be close in case something untoward happened. She worried me in a way no other agent ever had. No other person ever had.

  “Sure,” she replied tossing her cup into the trash. “We got scene guards and who is handling that?”

  “Sean O’Hare’s company. I asked that Fairfax PD let Sean know when I told them we would take the case.”

  We walked down the corridor, talking. Sam and Lee were ahead of us. They took the elevator to the parking garage. We’d take the stairs. Conway and elevators weren’t a great mix that was especially true when she was tired. I glanced at her as we neared the exit. Weary and trying to hide it. I felt a smile brewing. Sometimes I thought I enjoyed her company too much. She wound me up like a spring on a regular basis while simultaneously making everything okay. Messy. Complicated. Conway. And I knew I was smiling.

  I held the stairwell door open for her.

  “Thank you,” she said with a smile.

  “You’re welcome.”

  The door slowly closed behind us as we walked down the stairs, side by side. Her arm brushed mine on occasion making it hard for me to focus.

  An hour later we were walking up an overgrown path to a derelict house. We were at the last crime scene. The freshest one. A guard stood at the front of the dilapidated porch.

  “Delta A,” Conway said passing her identification wallet over.

  “Crime scene investigators have finished, ma’am, you can go on in.” He handed the identification back.

  “Thank you,” Conway replied.

  Sam moved in front of her. I stifled a smile. None of us liked her going into buildings first. If she ever figured that out there would be hell to pay. Sam flicked his flashlight on and entered the house. We all followed suit. Sam, Conway, me, and then Lee in the back. Sam and Lee switched positions regularly when we entered unknown situations. Taking turns at being point and rear guard. Conway and I changed it up in the middle.

  The house was falling down. Holes in the floorboards. Plaster and hunks of wall missing. Ceilings sagging.

  “Watch your feet,” Sam said shining his flashlight beam on a missing section of floor with a single plank of wood bridging the two foot gap. “Carefully does it.”

  “Where was the body found?” Conway asked me.

  “Third bedroom.”

  “Crime scene tape up ahead, must be it,” Sam said.

  One by one we crossed the plank and moved into the hallway beyond, following Sam.

  I watched with fascination as Conway stood in the doorway and become very still.

  I’d seen that before, every crime scene. Almost as if she breathed in the events.

  Her eyes took in the whole room. Those seconds before she moved always seemed like minutes. I waited, as usual trying to figure out what she could see, hear and smell. She took several steps into the room, allowing me to move up beside her.

  Conway turned to me. “Incongruous. The house is falling apart and this room is not.”

  And she was right. The room did not fit with the rest of the house.

  “Staged?”

  “Yeah,” Conway said. “Why is there no mention of the condition of the room in the report?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied and made a note to check it out.

  “We need to find out where she lived. I think this room was made to look like her room.”

  “Now there’s a weird twist,” I replied.

  “This is messy,” she said.

  Streaks of red ran down the wall behind the bed. Cast off from the weapon used. Blood soaked into the bed where the woman bled out. Exsanguination.

  “Any mention of the murder weapon?” Lee asked.

  “No weapon found. Wounds suggested a knife. Autopsy will tell us more,” I replied.

  “Knife,” Lee whispered. “We’re looking for a blade.”

  Conway moved into the room and walked around the bed. The snap of latex gloves caught my attention.

  “Conway?”

  “The top drawer of the nightstand is not shut properly,” she said. “It’s not open but not completely closed like the other drawers.” Conway opened the drawer. “Looks like blood in here. Cast off and some trace. I think the Unsub touched stuff in this drawer.”

  I joined her and looked into the drawer.

  “I agree, the drawer was open when the woman was killed and pushed shut afterwards,” I said. “If the Unsub had opened it after the death, there’d be trace on the handle, but it’s on the top edge and inside on the contents.”

  Conway nodded.

  “Probably pushed it shut with the back of a hand,” she said. “There’s no blood smears on the outside of that drawer.” Conway leaned in for a better look. She pulled out her phone and photographed the inside of the drawer then pocketed her phone and inspected the contents.

  “Kurt, we need the autopsy report A-sap,” Conway said and picked something up she’d found in the drawer. “Got some evidence bags?”

  Sam handed her one. Conway dropped the object into the bag and sealed it. She handed it to me.

  “A vibrator,” I said, looking at contents through the thick plastic. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking someone used it during the attack. The button at the end has traces of what looks like blood. There is a very smudged bloody hand print low on the shaft.”

  “No mention of any sexual component to the attack,” I said.

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. No one mentioned the condition of the room in comparison to the rest of the house either.”

  Right, again. No autopsy reports had come through for any of the victims, yet. Possible that police missed a few things due to the nature of the crime.

  A bloody mess makes it hard to see exactly what went on.

  Conway went through the other nightstand drawers. I turned my attention to the bureau on the far wall. Lee moved to the end of the bed and searched through a large chest that sat there. Sam examined the contents of the desk under the window.

  The dust free bureau smelled of fresh furniture p
olish. I breathed in the smell. Lemon Pledge. On the top were four photos in wooden frames. The victim and a man. They looked happy but then most people in displayed photographs do. People don’t frame a picture taken right after an argument. The drawers themselves were tidy. Everything in neat piles. No blood. It didn’t look as though anyone had been through them. What was missing? A jewelry box. There was no gap on the top of the bureau suggesting anything missing. Didn’t women usually have a jewelry box?

  “Conway, do you have a jewelry box?” I asked, turning to face her.

  “Yes.” She tilted her head to the side. “Why?”

  “Because there isn’t one here.”

  Everyone looked at me and gave a collective nod.

  “Where do woman usually keep jewelry boxes?” Lee asked.

  Conway pointed to the bureau. “That’s a likely place. If this is a replica of someone’s bedroom and they had a jewelry box I’d expect it to be there.”

  “Do we have confirmed identity of this victim?” Lee asked. “Because I don’t remember a name. Just a reference to Jane Doe four in the report?”

  I shook my head.

  Conway walked to the door and ripped off her gloves, balling them up and dropping them into her pocket. “We need an address and a name and to know why this room looks so different to the rest of this crappy house.”

  I followed Conway out.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked as we carefully walked back to the front door. Once outside she stopped and faced me.

  “That someone went to a lot of effort here. If there is a missing jewelry box, could be the trophy.” She rubbed her temples with her fingers. “Abduction is one thing, but this is pre-planned like nothing I’ve seen before. This shows patience and attention to detail, if, this is a replica of her room and I think it is.”

  “What makes you think that?” I asked. I thought it too, but I wanted to know what was happening in her head.

  She smiled and shrugged. “It looks like it could be. We need to know for sure, because this is major stalking. A replica room means someone was in her house and went through her things and then went to the trouble of obtaining everything in a new room and then making it up so it looked identical. Why?”