by Ellie Marney
“In the FBI, always,” he says gravely.
She collects the folder with McMurtry’s summary off the desk. “Okay, then.”
Bell stands. “Okay, then. Now I guess we go see Betty.”
Later that night, after she has been photographed, allocated, processed, after she’s unpacked her small suitcase in her gray-carpeted dorm room in the Jefferson building, after she’s eaten a cafeteria dinner, filled out more paperwork, lain down at last on the polyester comforter on her new single bed, Emma wonders how two men, Cooper and Bell, find their purpose in hunting serial murderers.
Cooper likes the challenge, the puzzle, she decides. With his alert stillness and fastidious manners, he reminds her of a fox.
Bell is different—he relates to her differently. She thinks he might have sisters. Tomorrow she’ll find out. Tomorrow she’ll see if they can make this “unit” thing work, and that is her last thought before exhaustion claims her.
CHAPTER FOUR
They take Bell’s car to Beckley. Emma doesn’t trust her Rabbit—she loves it, but she has realistic expectations, and driving to Virginia seems to have overtaxed the engine somehow.
Bell’s driving a Dodge pickup; it’s in good shape and it has air-conditioning. They’ve had the radio tuned to some local station, and now Bell has switched to the news. They’re fast approaching Lexington, where Emma is hoping for coffee and pie and a clean women’s bathroom.
“So you’ve been in pre-US Marshal training for a year?”
“Ten months.” Bell shrugs. “My birthday’s in August. I basically started the program the day after I turned eighteen.”
Bell has brown-tinted aviator sunglasses on and the driver’s side window rolled down. Sunlight dashes itself against the white of his shirt. His suit trousers still look neat after three hours on the road and his jacket is on a hanger behind them. At least he’s left off the tie until they get to the prison. Emma thinks he drives like she expected, staying exactly at the speed limit.
A folder of paperwork lies open over her knees. She’s been reading Cooper’s summary on McMurtry out loud, and she and Bell have talked awhile. Cooper is canny, she realizes. One road trip is a better get-to-know-you than a thousand formal handshakes at Quantico.
“Living away from home is tough,” Emma notes.
“It is.” Bell takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes with his knuckle, suspends the glasses off the neck of his shirt. “But being away for LEO training is no different than being away for college, I guess.”
“I go to college in my home state, though. Wisconsin’s a long way from Texas.”
“That’s true. But Texas won’t let you start until you’re twenty.”
“How did you get recruited for this? If you don’t mind me asking,” she adds quickly. “Cooper said everyone on this detail had some kind of experience with, uh—”
“My dad was a US Marshal. He was murdered by a serial offender.” Bell keeps his face forward, eyes trained out the windshield. “It was during an arrest. There was a situation, and my father was involved, and he got stabbed.”
“Oh.” She feels a little winded. “Jesus. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. You asked—it’s all right to ask. It was two years ago.”
“Okay.”
“We’ve gotta know this stuff about each other if we’re gonna work together.”
“Right. Yeah.” She nods at the folder in her lap, closes it, and places it on the bench seat between them. Sweat in her palms at the prospect of talking about this. “Well. I’m the only survivor of the Daniel Huxton case. He was the guy in Ohio who—”
“I know,” Bell says. “You don’t have to tell me. I know about it.”
“You do?” Emma wishes her heart would stop beating so fast. “Ah, of course you do. You read the news.” She looks out the window and tries not to think about it. Tries to think of something nice: her mother and the petunias, the soft black loam in the flower boxes.
“I remember,” he says. “My dad put the newspaper in front of me at the breakfast table and said, ‘This is what real bravery looks like.’ I paid attention.” When Emma doesn’t reply, he continues. “You’d just turned sixteen. You fought off Huxton, escaped, then found help and led the police team back up the mountain to the location.”
“It wasn’t…” Thinking about petunias isn’t working. Emma reaches for her inner gyroscope. “It sounded really straightforward in the media. It wasn’t.”
“It never is,” Bell says. “There was a standoff, right? And Huxton shot himself.”
“He…” Her breath is thin, like she’s at high altitude. “He was, um…”
“I understand. You don’t have to go over it. It’s okay.” Bell looks at her, looks away. “It was messy, right? Every situation like that is messy.”
“Yeah.” He doesn’t need me to explain. The relief of that makes her light-headed, but Emma keeps her eyes on him. She finds the sight of his profile steadying. “You get through it, though.”
“That’s right. You get through it.”
This small agreement between them is calming. Which is good, because at the end of this road there is Beckley, and Emma’s nerves are plucking at her. She reminds herself this was her choice. She chose to do this, and she’s sure the reason why will come clear in time.
For now, the late May air is rushing by her from the open window, the sun warming her face and shoulders, and they’ve got the war-wound talk out of the way.
They’re coming into the outskirts of the town, so there’s more traffic. Emma looks out at the colors in the foliage by the roadside and presses her palms flat onto her knees. “Why do you think Cooper sent us to McMurtry first? I mean, we could’ve seen Gesak, or Campinelli. Their prisons are both closer to Quantico by about a hundred miles.”
Bell reaches to turn down President Reagan’s voice on the radio, his focus not straying from the road. “Beckley is only medium security, with a work camp. McMurtry is one of the younger subjects, and he’s in a more comfortable environment. He might be less hardened, easier for us to talk to. I mean, Cooper said he spent some time complaining about the toilet paper.”
“Mouthy. Great.” Emma grimaces. Not that she’s expecting any of the subjects to be Mr. Personality.
“If he’s talkative, that’s better for us. We just need to direct the flow of the conversation.” Bell lifts one shoulder. “But hey, I’m just spitballing about Cooper’s motivations. Maybe he picked the file closest to his desk.”
“I don’t think he would do that,” Emma says slowly. “He’s particular. And I get the impression he’s reasonably good at his job.”
Bell nods, checks his side mirrors as they come off the interstate. “He knows this assignment is going to be tough. It’s in his best interest to ease us in with a softball subject before we get to the hard stuff.”
“You said you’re a Marshal candidate, but you seem to know a lot about FBI procedure.”
“Like I said, I know the life. My dad used to talk about working with other agencies. He admired the bureau. Said they trained hard.” Bell shrugs again. “I’m used to law enforcement. I guess it must seem weird to a civilian.”
Emma snorts. “My dad is a third-generation farmer and my mom’s a grade-school teacher. They watch The Love Boat, not Hill Street Blues—they’re about as far from law enforcement as you can get. The only time I ever dealt with the FBI was after Huxton.”
“There’s a Waffle House up here on the right,” Bell says, indicating with his chin. “I’m gonna pull over. So did the FBI treat you okay after Huxton?”
Bell seems like a true believer so she doesn’t want to be too critical of the FBI, but she can’t help a certain sharpness of tone. “They were polite. Respectful. But they were still trying to figure out what went wrong. They questioned me pretty thoroughly. And then they kept coming back with more questions when I just wanted to put it all behind me.”
As she gets out of the pickup, Emma feels that twit
ch in her legs again—she’s spent too much time in cars over the past three days.
“So did they figure it out, why Huxton wasn’t arrested earlier? What went wrong?” Bell locks the truck, shrugs on his jacket as they walk.
“They had some circumstantial evidence but nothing solid.”
“The same thing that went wrong with Bundy.”
“I haven’t read much about Bundy. He was smart, right? Educated? Huxton wasn’t smart like that, but he had animal cunning—he covered his tracks. And the FBI didn’t know about the mountain house. They were chasing their tails.” That sharpness again. But Emma likes her sharpness—it’s kept her alive. “Then two more girls went missing. And then he caught me.”
“And you brought him down.”
“It was a group effort.” She pulls open the door to the restaurant.
They order coffee and food, and Emma uses the bathroom. It’s clean enough. They eat at the counter. The pie is not as good as she hoped, so she smothers it with cream.
“So, this interview,” Bell says, finishing his waffles. “We got a plan for that? Or did you want to play it by ear?”
Emma hesitates. “Not sure.”
“Are you going to cope with the interview okay?”
She hasn’t wanted to express those doubts to herself, so she’s surprised Bell picked up on them. “I don’t know. I hope so. Are you?”
He nods. “It’ll be uncomfortable. But I usually find I feel better going into an uncomfortable situation if I’ve got a plan. Then I’ve got something to fall back on if I need it.”
“A plan like what? Good cop, bad cop?”
“Maybe. Do you think that’d work with a guy like McMurtry?”
Why is Bell deferring to her on this? Emma blinks with the realization: It’s because he thinks she’s an expert. Three days of horror in a serial killer’s basement—that’s all it takes to make you an expert. Jesus. She toughs out the urge to vomit or cry, takes a breath. Chases the last of the cream around with her spoon, considering the question.
“I think McMurtry will have had plenty of adult officers trying to nail him down with questions. I think we should keep it conversational.”
“Okay. Sounds good.” Bell smiles softly. “I don’t know how to run good cop, bad cop anyway. That was more my dad’s thing—he and my mom used it on me more times than I can remember.”
Emma’s voice gentles. “You were close with your dad?”
“Yeah.” He looks at his plate. “It’s kinda weird, doing this. Wearing his suit, working the job. But it’s what I always wanted.”
“Is your family okay with you going into training, after what happened to your dad?”
“I guess.” Bell leans his forearm on the counter and sips his coffee. Even without the tie, he really couldn’t look more like a cop if he tried. “My mom’s fine with it. She understands. One of my sisters keeps getting on my case about it, though.”
“How many sisters?”
“Two. Both younger.”
Gotcha. Emma raises a finger. “One older.”
“Your family getting by okay, after what happened?”
She shrugs. “They’re okay.”
“And how do you get by?” Bell keeps his eyes on his coffee when he asks, as though the question isn’t important.
“I run.” On the earth, and sometimes in my dreams. Emma doesn’t voice that thought.
He meets her gaze. “I lift. Hit the weights, hit the bag. It helps.”
“Running definitely helps. Sometimes you need to funnel the energy somewhere. When my mind starts looping, I run through it.”
He nods. He understands. “It’s good to have a strategy.”
“I can run through almost anything, I think.” Emma sets her spoon down. “It’s not just moving your feet—it’s a mental discipline. I haven’t had a chance to move much since I left Ohio, though,” she admits.
“Well, hell, you should go out as soon as we get back to Quantico,” Bell says. “I’ve been to the gym room already—the equipment’s real good. And there’s a track all around the base.”
“I’ve heard about it.”
“You should check it out. Okay, I’m gonna pay.” Bell flips his napkin onto his plate.
They get back on I-64, heading deeper into coal country. Soon they’re on the Industrial Park Road outside Beaver. They’re close; Emma feels a humming in her blood. They arrive at a checkpoint before the parking area, the stone sign carved like a grave marker.
Visiting hours are from eight until three—they need at least an hour for the interview, so they’ve just made the cut. Signing in, they have to show their flimsy new ID cards and hand the paperwork over for inspection. The guards inspect them, too: a girl with a buzz cut and a boy wearing his father’s suit. Bell acts like law enforcement, though, and he seems to know the right way to talk. Emma’s already noticed that his social intelligence is far from standard-issue.
There’s a bitter taste in her throat, like she’s been chewing aspirin. As she initials an entry waiver, the pen shakes in her fingers. She works to tamp it down.
Before the metal detector, they hit a snag when Emma is informed her T-shirt is inappropriate and she can’t wear it into the prison.
“It’s orange, ma’am,” the guard at the station explains. “Same color as the inmates’ jumpsuits.”
“Oh.” The guard’s hair is about the same color as her shirt, but Emma’s not inclined to point that out.
Bell frowns. “Is there a shirt she can change into?”
“On site?” The guard looks confused. “No, sir.”
“Or maybe I can just wear my jacket?” Emma suggests.
“No, ma’am, no hooded jackets of that type allowed. But you can go back into Beaver to the charity shop there. They got supplies for cheap.”
Emma and Bell exchange glances. By the time they get back from Beaver, visiting hours will be nearly over and this whole trip will have been for nothing.
“One second,” Bell says to the guard. He pulls Emma away a little. “I’ve got a white T-shirt on under my button-down.”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s better than going in solo.” He lifts his chin at the guard. “You got bathrooms close?”
“I can’t wear your undershirt!” Emma hisses.
He’s already loosening his cuffs. “It’s a T-shirt, not an undershirt. Gimme one minute.”
The bathrooms are in an adjacent hallway. Bell comes out tucking his tails in at the back, with the T-shirt under his arm. Emma blushes to high heaven. She grabs the shirt and stalks into the women’s room.
Bell’s shirt is worn soft from many washings. It smells unfamiliar and is still warm from him. She stuffs her own T-shirt into the pocket of her jacket, which she’ll be leaving in the locker, it seems.
“All good now?” The guard appears bemused.
“Peachy,” Emma mutters.
“We’re good,” Bell says.
They’re buzzed through.
A series of rolling gates and barred windows, beige-painted cinder block corridors. Emma squeezes her hands into fists.
Another guard unlocks the door to the interview room. The room is not like the general visitation area: It’s private, compact, and there’s a single chair facing two other chairs across a screwed-down metal table. There’s also a one-way mirror on the wall, which Emma doesn’t like.
“McMurtry will think they’re observing his responses.”
“This is all they can give us, I think,” Bell says. “But let me ask.”
He knocks on the door, steps out to speak to the duty guard. For the moment the door is open, Emma hears the buzz of gate releases, the clang of metal, a faraway yelping that sounds more animal than human.
She rubs the cold out of her biceps and searches for balance. Her armpits are damp and the tinnitus in her head has returned. She tries to block it out, to simply recall everything she read about Clarence McMurtry in Cooper’s summary.
Seventee
n years old—his birthday was only a month ago. White male, five-six, brown and brown, no identifying marks or tattoos. That might have changed since he entered prison; he’s been incarcerated for nearly a year. His aunt, Joanna McMurtry, visits him at 11:00 AM every other Saturday. The aunt, a sixty-one-year-old widow, is the woman who raised McMurtry after his own mother, Joanna’s sister, broke parole on a variety of drug and solicitation charges eleven years ago and left the state, current whereabouts unknown.
Bell steps back in. “This is what we’ve got. And McMurtry’s on his way.”
“Okay.” Emma nods, sits in one of the chairs, stands up again.
Bell frowns at the door, hands on hips. “You still want to keep this conversational, like we talked about?” He glances at her. Looks more closely. “Lewis?”
“Yes. Maybe.” Emma is aware that her voice sounds detached. “Maybe not.”
Bell angles in front of her. “How’re you doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because we can—”
“Just stop talking for a second.” The walls suddenly feel very close and the room seems over-warm. “I need to focus.”
Bell becomes a kind of stillness, like lake water. “Are you gonna be okay? We don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, we do.” Emma meets his eyes. “We actually do. We’ve been given a job, and we’ve come all this way, and… it’s important.”
He pauses. “Do you need to be angry at me? To let off steam before this happens?”
In that moment, of him offering to be her release valve, Emma realizes she can stabilize on her own. She can do this. She has been in far worse situations and survived.
“No,” she says, softening. “No, I don’t need to be angry at you.”
“Okay. Phew.” Bell’s lip quirks. “Because we can do that, but I’m betting you’ve got a mean right hook.”
She blows out air, almost surprised into laughter. “The meanest.”
“Lewis.” He doesn’t touch her but it’s as if she can feel a steadying hand anyway. “Can you run through this?”
“Yeah.” She firms her feet. “Yes. I can run through this.”