Casey stood and greeted her with a grateful hug.
“Thank you for coming,” Casey said.
“I’m happy to help in any way. Have you found Billie, by any chance?” Amy asked her.
“I’m so afraid for her.”
Casey slid back into her seat. Amy sat across from her. A young waiter came up. Amy smiled and asked Casey what she would like.
They both opted for pancakes and coffee. When the waiter left, Amy asked, “Casey, what do you know about Maclamara?”
“What’s Maclamara?” Casey asked.
“A town, south of Micanopy, north of Ocala.”
“I, uh, well, you know how that goes! I’ve lived in Florida my whole life and I haven’t heard of dozens of towns and cities, I guess. I mean, they’re incorporating new cities all the time because the population of the state keeps booming.”
“So, you never heard of Maclamara before?” Amy asked.
Casey shook her head.
“But your brothers are there.”
“They have an apartment in Gainesville, so they must have been just visiting. And they’re not bad guys, honest.”
Amy frowned. “So, what do you think might cause your brothers to become involved with a cult?”
“Oh, I can’t believe that they’re really involved with the cult.”
“Casey, they are.”
Amy fell silent as their food arrived. When the waiter left again, Casey responded passionately. “But they wouldn’t hurt anyone. They were raised to believe that life is sacred.” She laughed. “Hey, Chase is a vegetarian. I think he worries that the broccoli he eats might have feelings!”
“They’re both still at school in Gainesville?”
“Yes, they’re registered, doing all their work.”
“And they live in Gainesville.”
“Yes.”
“And they know Ezekiel and Aaron Morrison?”
“Yes, and that’s where I wind up scared. Morrison has... a lot of money. When he was in Florida, my dad made a point of meeting him, and trying to draw him into our fold. Of course, we met the boys, too. I’m sure I told you that my dad felt a man like Morrison has the resources to do a lot of good. Anyway, that’s when my brothers started hanging out with the Morrison boys. And they had boats, they had fast cars, fake IDs when they were young... It was a big change. Growing up, we were always looked after, but my dad is a pastor who practices what he preaches. We didn’t have a lot of material belongings. And falling in with the Morrison boys, well...they had every toy known to man. But even if Morrison’s kids might be in a cult and might be dangerous, that’s not my brothers.”
“What do you know about Aaron and Ezekiel?”
Casey hesitated. “Okay, they’re creeps. And here’s the thing. I know my brothers love me and that they’d never hurt me. Those boys treat women like tissue paper—used fast and disposed of even more quickly. Zeke started coming on to me one day. I couldn’t stand him. Right, I know—I didn’t like Hank, either. Dad taught me to respect myself. Zeke tried to basically buy me. I told him he might have all the money in the world, but I wasn’t for sale. He went to Jayden and Chase, super angry. And they told him that I was my own person. After that, I didn’t see the Morrison boys anymore.” She sighed. “I hate to say this, but while my brothers didn’t want me treated like tissue paper, they loved the Morrison boys’ ability to buy booze, fancy toys—and women.”
She looked at Amy earnestly. “If anyone is bad, it’s those two! I wanted you to know what kind of people they are.”
“Have you seen them down by your home recently?” Amy asked.
“No,” Casey admitted, frustrated. “But my brothers haven’t been home in a long time, either. Dad was talking about taking a trip up here to see the two of them.”
“Hmm. We’ll give him a call. Maybe he can get them to talk to us,” Amy said.
Casey seemed to look happier. “I tried calling both Jayden and Chase. Neither of them answered my calls. Chase texted me, though. Said he was fine and that I should worry about work. He said I was taking off too much time.”
“Are you?”
“I work for an advertising company. I can work from wherever I am. I love my office, but... I guess I’ve been off lately. With all that’s been happening.”
“Casey, honestly, we’re worried about you. You might consider protective custody.”
“Me? No, no. I told you—my brothers will not let anything happen to me. And I’m staying at a horse farm. They have some big dogs there. I’ll be fine. I might even shake everything off and go spend a day at Disney or Universal! Have a little fun.”
“I wish that—”
“I swear to you. I’ll be fine,” Casey vowed. She stood. “I just wanted to reach out to you. I... I’m still praying that you find Billie. That you find her okay. But...if anyone is involved, it’s those two rich kids!”
Amy stood, too. “Casey—”
Their waiter rushed over with the bill. Amy took it and Casey smiled at her. “I promise I’ll keep in touch with you, and I promise I’ll be safe!”
She hurried out of the diner.
Amy sighed and went to pay the bill.
Casey hadn’t really given her anything except for the unsurprising fact that a couple of wealthy boys were badly behaved, and the information that Pastor Colby might be on his way north. To see his sons. Casey loved her father and her brothers—could her faith in them be misplaced?
She paid the bill and headed out to the car. She saw that Roger’s van was already moving.
Her phone rang, and when she answered, Hunter told her, “We’re following Casey. Did she give you anything?”
“She thinks that Zeke and Aaron are involved. Her brothers are angels who will defend her no matter what, and Pastor Colby might be on his way up here. Oh, she says that she’d never even heard of a town called Maclamara.”
“All right. We’re going to follow her a bit, but I’ll get Ellison to assign an officer to watch her before we get too far. We’ll meet you back at the inn, see where we are. Oh, Ellison already has a search team at work. They’ve started with cadaver dogs, searching state and federal land so that no one can intervene.”
“Good. You want me to just head to the inn? I’m so frustrated. I should be doing something useful.”
“Pieces are falling in. Garza has a team investigating the detention center where there have been questions about the number of women being held, and where it seems they might have been before disappearing.”
“And becoming corpses,” Amy said bleakly.
“We’ll meet you back at the inn or, if Casey leads us anywhere, be in touch.”
“All right.”
“Get straight back there. And be careful. I do believe that things are heating up and I don’t really trust anyone.”
“Okay, I’m heading straight back.”
They ended the call. She had the phone pressed to her ear as she headed to her car and was busy digging the car key out of her purse when she heard a rustle behind her.
But she didn’t turn fast enough.
She had a brief impression of a young man’s face.
Her first thought was that something had been wrong when she paid the tab.
Then she knew that it wasn’t that. She knew the young man’s face.
Zeke Morrison.
But she made the realization just as something clouted her hard on the head, and the world turned black.
* * *
Casey Colby drove along a rutted paved road.
But she didn’t turn off when she should have taken the turn for the highway—if she’d been headed back to Ocala.
“Where the hell is she going?” Roger muttered. “Looks like she just might be heading for Maclamara.”
“She told Amy that she’d never even heard of
Maclamara,” Hunter said. “But it sure does seem like she’s going that way.”
Casey kept driving.
“Son of a bitch,” Hunter muttered. “We’re worried about protecting her and it looks like she’s involved.”
“Maybe she’s lost,” Roger suggested.
“With GPS?” Hunter asked skeptically.
About a mile before the turnaround where they’d parked to stake out the barbecue, Casey pulled off the side of the road.
“Should I stop?” Roger asked.
“No, drive by. We’ll stop at the turnaround. See if she’s still there, take a walk back and make sure that she’s all right.”
As they passed, they could see she was looking at her phone.
Roger drove closer to the turnaround and found a place where he could pull a good distance off the road. Hunter leaped out, aware that Roger was following him and that he would do so at a bit of a distance.
He moved along the road. From the trees, he heard shouting and a dog barking. He drew his Glock and leaned against a massive pine, but then realized that ahead of him a familiar crew was in the woods.
He pulled out his phone to call Roger.
“Hey,” he said when his friend answered. “Keep an eye on Casey. I’ve found one of the forensic teams. A dog seems to have found something. I’m going to check on it, meet back up with you.”
“Gotcha,” Roger assured him.
Hunter picked his way through the trees, and when he got closer he called out. “Hello! Special Agent Hunter Forrest here, coming through!”
He moved into a shaded grove.
It was a pretty place, the trees moving lightly in the breeze, the scent of the earth rich, the air pleasant, oaks and pines mingling, needles creating a soft carpet on the ground and the sun breaking through to dazzle the place with glints of illumination.
A woman in a county forensic vest walked toward him, extending a hand. “Nellie Rodriguez,” she told him. “My team is out here with me. However you figured this, Special Agent, you figured it right.”
“What have you found?”
“Come with me—just about fifty yards ahead, there’s another clearing like this one.”
He followed her, nodding to the two men and the woman who finished out Nellie’s team and ducking down to let the two large German shepherds—also part of the team—smell the back of his hand.
“Ajax, Gunther, he’s good!” Nellie Rodriguez assured the dogs.
Hunter patted each dog, and stood, and it was then that he saw what the team had been doing.
The clearing had been dug up—just lightly so far, the team having used the dogs for discovery, then used small tools to start to excavate the earth.
There were four sections that they had dug thus far.
Four shallow graves.
One skeleton had been almost cleared. It was all there: skull, rib cage—crushed—arm and leg bones.
Four people.
Four human beings.
“A good call. They’ve been here awhile, though. We’ll get people out from the anthropology department at the university, and they, along with medical examiners, will hopefully let us know just how long all these bodies have been here.”
“Anything besides bones?” he asked.
“Not much. Pieces of fabric. Two belt buckles. We haven’t gotten very far. But no wallets, no purses, no identification. They might have come from anywhere. From my experience, however, they’ve been here at least ten years, but they’re not historic—there’s still too much integrity in the bones.”
He’d been right. He didn’t feel good about it, but he’d been right. Years ago, when Ethan Morrison had begun his conquest of the tiny town, he’d removed all opposition.
“It’s definitely not an old Indian burial ground,” he said.
“Definitely not,” the woman told him.
One of the dogs—Ajax, he thought—started barking.
They would find more bodies, he imagined. And even though he knew, he found his mind and heart rebelling.
How could this happen? How did intelligent people not see that they were being manipulated?
But it happened; he knew it better than most people.
“Thanks!” he called, lifting a hand to wave to the crew.
“Thank you!” Nellie Rodriguez called to him. “Well, I think. I mean, this is so sad and tragic, but at least we’re on our way to allowing these people decent burials.”
Hunter wasn’t sure how much that mattered.
The greatest cruelty had already been done to them. But he nodded, waved again and moved quickly and carefully back toward the road.
He judged his distance and emerged just a couple hundred feet from where Casey now stood beside her car, leaning against it, Roger at her side.
“I know! I was bad!” Casey called to him.
He joined the two. “Pardon?”
“You people are so good, so wonderful—trying to protect me.”
“So, you ride into danger?” Hunter asked.
Casey shook her head, appearing distressed. “No, I didn’t know that there was a town here. I mean, I knew there were cities and towns, I just didn’t know that there was a town called Maclamara and that my brothers hung around it. When I left Amy, well, I’m sorry. Stupid, I know. But I called Chase when I left the restaurant and he didn’t answer. I’d wanted to see him at his apartment, but then I thought, if the little rug rat wasn’t answering me, I’d come and find him. And it is on the way back to Ocala, so...”
“Casey, I can’t order you to do anything,” Hunter said.
“I explained that,” Roger said.
“But people have died.”
Casey flushed. “My brothers aren’t killers.”
“Even you think that they have friends who could be,” Hunter said.
“But they won’t let anyone hurt me!”
“If you’re seen as a threat, they might not be able to stop the others.”
Her bravado seemed to slip a little. “I—I can’t, I mean, I can’t believe—”
“Casey! You know that we found two murdered women,” Hunter said.
She let out a long breath. “Okay, okay. I’ll go to Ocala. I won’t try to find my brothers. But you need to know that my dad is worried, too. I think he’s planning to leave Karyl in charge at the church and come up here.”
“Come on, we’ll escort you until I reach an officer who will take over for us. Casey, you must understand and accept that you might be in very real danger. If Morrison’s sons are in this, they’re taking orders from their father. They could see you as a terrible threat—and this group has a particular talent for making people disappear, until they want the bodies to be found,” Hunter said.
Tears stung Casey’s eyes. She wiped her hand across her face and nodded. “Okay, okay!”
She stood straight and went to open the driver’s side door to her vehicle. “Any particular way you want me to drive?”
Roger looked at Hunter, arching a brow.
“This will take us through the center of Maclamara and we can pick up one of the main roads once we’re through.”
Hunter nodded. “Casey, just keep driving.”
“Do I stop for red lights?” she asked with a sigh.
“Yes—the town does have one, I believe,” Hunter said, ignoring her nervous sarcasm. “But don’t stop otherwise.”
She got into her car. Roger and Hunter walked south toward his.
“That was harsh,” Roger said.
“She thinks that a family bond can save her. It can’t. I had to be harsh.”
“What did they find in the woods?” Roger asked. He didn’t wait for Hunter to answer. “Bodies?” he said.
“Bones, so far. You talk about your hostile takeover. I know it’s Ethan Morrison, good o
ld Brother Darryl’s boy. He took everything they learned under Brother William and kicked it up a bunch of notches. I just wonder what the hell else is going on.”
“You mean the way that they’re playing with Revelation?”
Hunter nodded. They had reached the van; he headed to the passenger’s side and hopped in. Roger took the driver’s seat and checked the rearview mirror.
Casey was coming. She would drive through the town as she had said.
“How the hell can anyone figure out what they’re doing? The New Testament wasn’t written in English at the get-go. It was written in something called Koine Greek—that’s K-O-I-N-E. Then you have all kinds of languages and versions and the new Bible and the popular Bible... It can all mean anything,” Roger said.
“I know. And even if we had an answer to the closest version of what was meant, it wouldn’t matter, because our killers are using whatever interpretation they choose. But one thing is certain—they are killing, and torturing their victims before they kill them. And they have to be stopped.”
“We’re close, my friend, we’re close.”
“Yeah, too close.” Hunter gestured out the windscreen. “We’re coming up on the biker bar. I’m thinking, by now, the town knows that Phin Harrison is dead.”
Traffic signs warned that the speed limit through town was thirty miles an hour.
They had slowed appropriately.
So had Casey.
“We can get her safely through to the next county, but we’ll need help keeping an eye on her,” Hunter said.
He pulled out his phone and called Ellison. He had to wait a few minutes to get in his request; Ellison was ranting, upset about the bones being found. In his county. But he was also grateful that they had looked, grateful that he had asked for FBI help, for Hunter specifically.
Hunter assured him he was glad to be working where he was most useful, then he was finally able to ask for an escort for Casey, and someone to watch over her, as well.
“I’ve got it,” Ellison told him. “I’ll ask the FDLE if I need to, but we cops in connecting counties have a good rapport. I’ll have help. We’re good. I promise you.”
Danger in Numbers Page 24