by Ellie Marney
“Yes, sir.” Bell’s neck gets hot.
Cooper quietly clears his throat. At Bell’s side, Emma is silent, but he can feel her vibrating.
Raymond’s voice becomes terse. “Your role has been made very clear to you, Mr. Bell. You are to adhere to your instructions. You are to assist with inquiries as they have been set out to you. And you are to maintain a low profile. Miss Lewis, I’m including you in all these comments. It is not your job to—”
“Do you know the young man you’re hunting, Mr. Raymond?” Emma says suddenly.
“Lewis.” The way Cooper says her name makes it sound like a swear word.
Raymond swivels to look at her. “Miss Lewis, I am explaining—”
“Do you know what kind of man he is? Because we do.”
Raymond’s face goes dark at Emma’s tone. “Miss Lewis—”
She steps forward. Her eyes are vivid, but Bell sees not the faintest hint of fear in her anywhere.
“He’s young,” she says. “He’s physically strong and fit. He’s five and a half to six feet tall, and his blood type is AB-positive. He’s probably white—he hunts across race lines, but we see a preponderance of white males in this category. He has medical training, and he holds down a job. He has a psychological disorder that means he finds his enjoyment in standing underneath his victims and bathing in their blood as he cuts their throats. And his prey is getting younger, because the last girl he took and used this way was fourteen years old.”
Cooper tries to rein her in. “Miss Lewis—”
“Do you understand this man, Mr. Raymond? Because this is who you’re trying to catch. He only hunts teenagers. He’s likely a teenager himself. And you’re telling us to stay out of it? How can we do that, in good conscience, when we’ve turned up more leads in a week than the police have in three months, and we’re the only people in this whole damn building who fall within both the offender and the victim demographic profile? Are you fucking kidding?”
“Miss Lewis.” Raymond stands, smooths down his tie. His face is dangerously mottled. “Miss Lewis, I am going to forget you said that last, and assume you have enough intelligence to get this. You are eighteen years old. You are untrained, unqualified, inexperienced—”
“Don’t you tell me I’m inexperienced.” She takes another step.
Bell takes her arm. “Emma.”
The blood in Raymond’s cheeks and forehead looks like a health hazard. “If you want to continue working with this organization, Miss Lewis, you will shut your mouth and listen.”
Emma’s bicep flutters under Bell’s palm, but her self-control holds. He knows she can stick up for herself, but he would very much like to sock Raymond in the jaw right now.
Raymond’s jowls quiver as he leans across the desk. “I could close your unit down with the stroke of a goddamn pen. I’ve got half a mind to do it anyway, after the disrespect you’ve shown me and this office. I could bust you back home in a hot second, and Mr. Bell, too.”
Please don’t do that, Bell thinks. All those victims. He sees Cooper bite his bottom lip.
“But I respect Ed Cooper, and I can see what he’s trying to do with this.” Raymond narrows his piggy little eyes at Emma directly. “You’ve had some good results so far. But don’t test me, Miss Lewis. Stay out of the Berryville case. If I hear you’ve been dipping your toe in current investigations again, I won’t just break up the unit—I’ll lay obstruction charges against you. Do you understand me?”
Emma’s lips purse tight.
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you understand me, Mr. Bell?”
Bell knows his face is ruddy. He buckles it down. Sticks to the script. “Yessir.”
Raymond stands to his full height, looking like someone tried to spit in his mouth. “Cooper, this was your idea. Get these teenagers under control or get them off my base. Are we clear?”
“Sir, yessir.”
“Now get the hell out of my office.”
In the descending elevator with Bell and Cooper, Emma’s head is aching.
“Well,” Bell says. “That… could’ve gone worse.”
“Miss Lewis—” Cooper starts.
Emma whirls on him. “What? You want to give me a big lecture about keeping my mouth shut?”
“Actually, I wanted to tell you what happened with Berryville. And I want you to tell me what happened with Kristin Gutmunsson, because that one I did not see coming.” Cooper loosens his collar by one button, at the neck. “And I wanted to say you managed okay. Don Raymond can be aggravating as hell.”
Emma is surprised into an honest answer. “He’s an asshole.”
“He’s easy to read.” Cooper regards her steadily. “Also easy to anticipate, and if you want to swim in this pond, you’d better figure out how to deal with people. I do want your insights on this case, Miss Lewis—I think you and Mr. Bell have proven you can make a contribution. But we could’ve used Raymond. Agreed with him, got on his good side. He would’ve made things easier for us. Now we have to dodge interference.”
Emma squeezes the back of her neck as the throb in her temples builds. “I need to go to my dorm. I have a headache, I need some Advil—”
“Don’t go running off just yet. Listen.”
Being asked to listen by Cooper bothers her less than being told to by Raymond. And Cooper looks exhausted. His eyes are red from rubbing. He’s been up most of the night between Berryville and Washington, but he’s here, wearing yesterday’s suit and defending them to Raymond and being straight with her.
“You need to remember something.” Cooper looks between her and Bell. “It’s something I suspect Mr. Bell already knows. And it’s this—whether you’re in the FBI or in college or out in the world, you’re going to meet people like Raymond every step of the way. Sometimes it’ll infuriate you, because petty bullshit and stupidity are infuriating, but you have to figure out a way to work with it.”
Petty bullshit and stupidity—Emma’s had it up to here with both. Her head is pounding like a drum and her control is shaking loose. “But I’m not good at that!”
“Then you’d better learn. Like I said, I’d like to have your input. But the standoff with Raymond was a misstep, and we’re gonna pay for it later. You’ve got real sand, Miss Lewis, but you need to learn to pick your battles, or you’ll end up dashing yourself to pieces.”
“So you’re telling me that I lived through Huxton but I’ve got to put up with assholes like Raymond? Someone who doesn’t even understand why we were recruited in the first place?” Emma can hear the misery in her own voice. “It’s garbage. And I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know why I’m still here—”
“You’re here because you want to spare the next victims. Because you want to put this killer away. Because you know what it’s like to survive someone like the Butcher, and that perspective can be a weapon against him.” Cooper relaxes his stare, leans back against the wall of the elevator. “Now go to your dorm and get something for your headache. Forget about Raymond. I’m going to stop at the atrium for coffee, then I’ll meet you both back at the office and we can think about what to do next.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Two hours later, Emma’s starting to feel better. Part of it was the Advil, part of it was what Cooper said in the elevator. The rest of it is this time she’s spent with him and Bell, pooling the information on the Butcher case.
“Next steps?” Bell taps his pen against the notepad in front of him at the desk. “We’ve got an outline, and we’re getting a clearer picture of his process now.”
“Thanks to Miss Gutmunsson,” Cooper says. Both he and Bell are down to shirtsleeves.
“But we’ve still got gaps to fill,” Emma says.
“Yes, we do.” Cooper looks like he needs to sleep for about a thousand years. “And if he’s preparing to take his activities underground, we need to fill those gaps fast. We need information on his vehicle and we need to narrow d
own his range. At the moment his hunting ground looks like most of Virginia. I’ve asked Wes Chamberlain, our tech guy, to keep plugging data into the computer banks—possible routes, on-and off-ramps, times of day—to see if we can get some ideas. Do we have anything more on the connections between the victims? Have you got any insights?”
“I’m… working on it.” Emma doesn’t know why the knowledge won’t come. Maybe she needs to sleep for a thousand years, too.
“Okay, then the next step for you two is digging into victim backgrounds, especially the three new ones, to see if there’s any points of commonality. We got the identification on Donna Williams, the third victim from Berryville, so we can add those details now. I’ve got other agents looking at this information, but it can never hurt to have a few extra pairs of eyes. Look at their medical histories, see if they gave blood, or got shots, or had a recent checkup. See if they share a doctor’s clinic. I don’t imagine it’ll be that simple, but we should look at everything.”
“You want us to visit the victims’ residences?” Bell asks, making a note.
“Not yet. I’ve got other people working that, let’s see what they pull up.” Cooper tears off a sheet from the notepad and scribbles. “I’m going back to Berryville tomorrow to do a press conference and see if we can drum up any witnesses. Here’s a list of some of the other team members—my second, Howard Carter, plus Pete Anderson, Jack Kirby, Mike Martino. Don’t contact them directly, but if their names come up, you know you’re dealing with my people. If you get really stuck, ask Betty to put you in touch with Carter, he’ll steer you straight.”
Bell nods. “So the victims are our focus now?”
“Yes. And you need to look like you’re still doing interviews. Raymond will be watching to see what you’re up to, and I want you looking busy.” Cooper drops his pen and leans back. “Work up an interview strategy for Campinelli—you can visit him at Butner sometime in the next few days.”
Emma knows that progress is being made on the case, although the pace of it is slow—walking pace. She wants to be sprinting.
It doesn’t help that they’re still supposed to be going to classes. Bell bullies her into attending a 3:00 PM lecture on Search and Seizure, where she shifts in her chair and the faces of the Berryville victims float behind her eyeballs. She tries switching the images out, tries conjuring the face of the Butcher himself, but that only produces a choking feeling. Once the class is over, she goes to the training lockers and pulls on her track gear, hits the Yellow Brick Road while everyone else is eating dinner.
She runs for longer than she intends, the trees around her gathering shadows. It’s cool beneath their branches, the pine needles slippery underfoot. There is no complexity here, no politics, just the burn in her legs and the sharp saw of her breath. Emma thinks of nothing at first, then she thinks of baking cookies with her sister at home, Robbie grinning as she nibbled the raw cookie dough when their mother wasn’t looking. Sweat soaks into the waistband at the small of Emma’s back, the fabric of her collar.
The hum of insects in the forest is a kind of tinnitus, and the air against her face reminds her of the Gutmunssons’ cool beauty, the pallor in Bell’s cheeks at Berryville, where a fourteen-year-old girl, Kimberley Berger, struggled to the last because there was nothing left but to struggle. Emma shakes out her arms and steadies her pace. The insight into that girl won’t come, and it won’t come, and the tinnitus in her ears is insects and heartbeat and breath, not screaming, and she runs harder.
When she finally runs herself out, all her clothes are sticking to her, and her legs are wobbling. Everyone else has deserted the course. The light is starting to go. She drinks her entire canteen and limps back in the gloom.
In the shower, she turns her face into the spray until she thinks of the Butcher standing under his victims with the knife, then she turns the faucet decisively off. She towels herself dry, applies Band-Aids to her blisters, pulls on cotton shorts and a tank. Lays out the victim identification photos on her comforter. Stares and stares, and scrunches up one page after another from the yellow legal pad in her lap until she realizes this is just the way the day is going, finally concedes defeat, and takes half a Valium. Tucks herself into bed, throws the covers off and pulls them back up until the drug takes hold and she sleeps, with no dreams.
At 07:40 she’s woken by a knock on the door, and she thinks it’s probably the floor supervisor checking on her, knowing her routine is to be out early. Groggy, she pulls her robe on and opens the door halfway to find Bell, in dark pants and a black T-shirt, with a bad case of bed head. His expression is very awake, though.
“Lewis, get dressed.” He grips the lintel of the door. “Looks like Simon Gutmunsson just got a letter from the Butcher.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Emma dresses quickly while Bell waits outside the door. She winces as she toes her shoes on, grabs a jacket, it’s Bell’s jacket. Grabs another one, holds them both as she scoops up the ID photos off her nightstand.
Bell, impatient, takes the jacket she proffers, looks at it, tosses it back into her room, and closes the door behind her. Moves quickly with her to the elevator. “It came with the morning mail. The guy who supervises Gutmunsson—”
“Pradeep,” Emma says, handing Bell the bundle of ID photos, tying her own jacket around her waist. “His name is Pradeep.”
“Okay, so he checks Gutmunsson’s mail. Apparently the guy receives a lot of mail.”
“He’s studying—he gets coursework sent from Georgetown University.”
“And he sometimes gets fan mail.”
“And interview requests from the media. I know.”
Bell has that lip curl, signifying disgust. They get in the elevator and Emma has a chance to tie her shoelaces.
“Anyway, Pradeep usually checks the obvious fan mail and leaves the formal correspondence, but he found a Georgetown letter that had arrived open.” Bell holds the handrail like it’s keeping him tethered. “He decided to show Dr. Scott. She thought it was weird enough to call Cooper. That was about ten minutes ago. Cooper thought the language in the first part of the letter suggested a Butcher link, so he told Scott to put the letter in a ziplock bag and asked her to give us a minute to get you to the phone. Why weren’t you up? I looked for you on the track.”
“I overslept,” Emma says. “Bad night.”
“Are you okay to do this?”
“I’m okay.” Emma hopes that’s not a lie.
The elevator spills them out onto the atrium floor; they move at a fast clip. Her stomach rumbles as they pass the cafeteria, and she remembers she missed dinner last night. A sniff of brewing coffee is all she has time for as Bell herds her toward the basement.
The Cool Room is disconcertingly crowded. Cooper is plugging in a phone provided by Betty. Bell tucks the ID photos back into the Butcher file on the desk as another agent—tall, stocky, mustached—moves closer. He’s wearing a tan suit and his dark hair is slightly longer than regulation. Emma thinks she recognizes his cologne: Savage, the same one her uncle uses. It may as well be called Macho.
“Mike Martino, hi.” He shakes their hands. “We’re sorting out a phone line here, because you’re—”
“—not allowed in the offices of Behavioral Science,” Bell finishes. “Yessir, we know. Good to meet you. Has Dr. Scott called back?”
The phone rings as he says it. Betty excuses herself as Cooper picks up and hits Conference.
“… there, Agent Cooper?”
“Yes, Dr. Scott, thanks for waiting. I’ve got you on speaker, everyone’s here.” Cooper looks better: Still in shirtsleeves, but it’s a new shirt and he seems more rested. “Can you describe the letter for us?”
Scott’s voice has a canned echo. “It’s typewritten, on some kind of thin paper. Onionskin, maybe. There’s a signature at the bottom that looks handwritten. The envelope is official letterhead from Georgetown University.”
Emma thrums a little inside.
Coop
er’s posture is attentive. “Can you read the entire letter aloud, please?”
“There’s no date,” Scott says. “Here’s the content—
“Dear Artist,
“It’s been an eventful month. I’ve found a place to settle, away from prying eyes, which will make a big improvement, and the most recent donor treatments have been incredibly effective—”
“That’s him,” Bell says.
“Gutmunsson keeps referring to donors,” Emma confirms.
When she looks over at Cooper, he’s nodding gravely. His gaze holds hers as Scott continues.
“—much better than I’d hoped. Finally, real results after the long process of trial and error! I feel myself getting stronger, faster, with each treatment. My friends comment on the change, and I confess I have trouble keeping in a small secret smile. I’m sure you understand. The minor refinements you suggested were wonderful, thank you—”
“That son of a bitch,” Bell breathes.
“Goddammit.” Emma sits down abruptly. “Simon Gutmunsson hasn’t been sharing ‘insights’ about the case. He’s been corresponding with the Butcher this whole time.”
The shock of understanding is like an evisceration. But in the hollow place left behind, she finds a supple coil of fury. The question isn’t How could Simon do this? This is a boy who disemboweled his friends for entertainment. Why wouldn’t he do this?
Beside her, Bell is swearing fervently under his breath. Cooper’s face is grim, and Emma can tell he’s thinking up new and dreadful punishments for Simon Gutmunsson.
“Do you want to hear the rest of the letter?” Scott seems to be getting testy about the frequent interruptions.
Cooper finds his equilibrium first. “Yes, Dr. Scott, please continue.”