If She Saw

by Blake Pierce

  The six other agents and assistants in the room also made their way over to her, introducing themselves and giving their thanks. Midway through this, Duran entered the room. He looked like he was in a hurry as usual but also looked satisfied that everyone was present and accounted for a full ten minutes before the meeting was set to begin.

  He gave a quick nod around the room and then motioned Kate forward. “Can I see you outside for a moment?” he asked.

  She followed him out into the hall, taking note that he closed the door behind them.

  “This team is made up of agents who have less than five years of experience each,” Duran explained to her. “But they all had tremendous results in the academy and, I believe, have the potential to be great agents with legacies maybe as stellar as yours. I tell you all of this so you can understand how motivated they are. They are extremely close to catching this guy and, as I explained earlier, a lot of what they’ve come up with mirrors the Frank Costello case. You remember the details well enough to help?”

  “I remember the details of the Costello case a little too vividly.”

  “Good. Help them out but don’t demean them. You’re here as support, not as a teacher. But, at the same time, if you could manage to lead them to where you think the path needs to lead…”

  She nodded. “I understand.”

  When they stepped back into the conference room, the team of seven were sitting around the table. Five of them were on devices—laptops, their phones, or tablets. Two preferred the old-school approach and were at the ready with pen and paper.

  “So,” she said as she claimed one of the three free seats at the table. “I’ve read over the case brief and am up to speed on the amazing work you all have done. But who would like to tell me how you got here? How are you this close to bringing this guy in?”

  A sleek-looking man who looked to be in his late twenties took the cue. He didn’t even let the others think about answering her question. Kate tried to decide if he was a kiss-ass or just extremely dedicated.

  “Four kidnappings in the last three weeks,” this man said. “One in Bethesda, Maryland, two outside of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and the other two in Louisville, Kentucky. There have been no bodies and no letters from the abductor. No demands. Which, honestly, is almost as bad as finding a body.”

  Kate didn’t agree with this, but she understood where he was coming from. If there were no demands being made for the release of the children, there was no telling what they were going through.

  As the sleek-looking man paused, the tall woman who had introduced herself to Kate spoke up. “Obviously, the area of interest mirrors the same locations as Frank Costello…not to a tee, but too close to ignore. Also, like Frank Costello, there is no preference of boys or girls. So far, two of each have been abducted.”

  “Walk me through each potential abduction scene,” Kate said.

  Another woman took this one. She sounded nervous and tired. “Two were taken from playgrounds, while the mothers were there with them. One of them admits to scrolling through Facebook while her kid was on the monkey bars. She guesses that there was perhaps fifteen to twenty seconds between her peering up from her screen. The third seems to have been taken after straying a bit away from her father in a Walmart in Louisville. The fourth had been walking to her grandmother’s house, just six houses down the street from her own home. She’d done it dozens of times, according to her mother.”

  “Not a single witness at all,” the sleek man said. “Somehow, we don’t even have this fucker leaving that Walmart on the security cameras.”

  “How’s that possible?” Kate asked.

  “Lawn and garden,” one of the agents said. “There’s only one security camera in the lawn and garden department of that particular Walmart. It faces in from the open air area of the flower section. If someone knew the layout of the store well enough, they would know how to make an exit through lawn and garden without being seen.”

  Kate’s brain was already kicking into high gear, trying to put the pieces together. “Have you checked past employees with knowledge of the camera systems?”

  “We’ve interviewed eleven,” the tall woman said. “Two were questioned a second time. In the end, it all came down to nothing.”

  Kate took a moment, getting out of her seat and walking to the front of the room. “If the presumption is that this man is connected to Frank Costello, it’s not even necessarily the locations that would matter—though it is very odd about the security cameras. We have to think like Frank Costello thought. Have you all looked at the footage from his interrogations?”

  “Several times,” a particularly tired-looking man at the back of the table said.

  “We’ve looked at the profiles of the kids, of the families, of even the fucking grandparents,” an angry-looking hefty man on the other side of the table said. “But there doesn’t seem to be anything.”

  “The thing that ended up tripping Frank Costello wasn’t any of that,” Kate said. “You’re looking in the wrong place if you think you’re going to catch this guy by hoping he’s using the same methodologies as Costello. Instead, you have to look at where Costello messed up. And as the files show you, the thing that led him to us in the end was the smallest of details—a small thing that connected each of the families not in genetics or daily routines, but in something so trivial it was never even looked at until it smacked me right in the face.”

  “You mean the YMCA,” the tall female agent said.

  “Hey, that’s right,” the sleek agent said. He now looked very pleased that he was in the room. He was also looking at Kate with the same sort of reverence that most younger agents had when she had been filling out the last of her days as an on-duty agent. “You found out in the end that the parents of those kids all had memberships to the YMCA. Costello was a member, too. But that’s really not too remarkable because tons of people have memberships to the YMCA.”

  “Exactly,” Kate said. She paused for a moment when she realized that every eye in the room was on her—even the pair in Duran’s head. He was smiling approvingly at her as he nodded for her to go on. “Costello used the YMCA as his hunting grounds. He scoped out the gyms—for about seven months, according to his story. He even played a few games of pick-up racquetball with the father of one of his victims.”

  “So we need to be looking for links outside of the basic family aspects of it all,” another of the agents said. “But I don’t even know if there are any. If so, we would have stumbled across it by now.”

  “Maybe you have,” Kate said. “Maybe it was right there in front of you the entire time but it looked so mundane and ordinary that you looked past it. Frank Costello did not adjust his life when he started abducting kids. He never stopped going to the YMCA and he never quit his job—never took any extra sick days or anything. And if we know that about him and we also know that he was working with someone else…”

  “Then they’re probably doing the same things,” the sleek agent said.

  “But why wait nearly twenty years to start again?” the angry-looking agent asked, typing something into his laptop without looking up.

  “Maybe it took that long for him to work up the nerve,” Duran suggested. “He’s never done this on his own before.”

  “It’s pretty much a textbook example of a man who’s been left behind by a partner in this kind of thing,” Kate said. “When Costello was apprehended and their little adventures came to an end, whatever partner he had likely found himself lost. A now what? sort of mentality. But something like abducting and killing kids…that just doesn’t go away. So yes…maybe it was just a matter of working up the nerve to get back to it. It’s likely, even. But we have to think about the sorts of things he might have been harboring or even putting into practice during that time. If he’s like Costello, he’s likely trying to not stand out. He’s not interrupting his daily life. And that’s a plus for you because that means he should be leaving a pretty big footprint. We just need t
o know where to start looking.”

  “Yes, and that’s where we’re coming up empty,” the tall female agent said. “When you’ve got a guy that moves around like a phantom, it’s hard to pin him down. We’ve checked security cameras, traffic cameras…”

  “We even had a team of agents check security camera footage of every gas station within twenty miles of each abduction site for anything we could find,” the formerly angry man said. “And nothing.”

  “Have you checked over the sites of Costello’s abductions?” Kate asked.

  “No use,” the sleek-looking agent said. “Of the two for-sure sites, one is a street that has now basically been bulldozed and turned into a high-end community. The other was a small playground that has gone to rot.”

  “But you know,” the female agent said thoughtfully, “you mentioned normal things a moment ago. About looking into things that are so obvious you overlook them until they slap you in the face…”

  She then started to rapidly flip through the pages of a case file in front of her. Without looking up, she said, “Lockridge, do you have the findings from the playground the third victim was taken from?”

  “Yeah,” the sleek-looking agent said. He clicked around on his laptop for a few seconds and added: “What are you looking for?”

  “The waste basket from the corner of the playground. It had been recently emptied, and the man from grounds maintenance believed anything in that can could have not been any older than five or six hours. You have the list of what was in there?”

  “Two Coke cans, a flier for a local business, an empty bag of ranch-flavored peanuts, a cracked sippy cup with a picture of Elmo on it.”

  The female agent pulled a sheet of paper from her pile and slammed it on the table with such force that a few of the others huddled around the table jumped. “Right here,” she said, excited. “The fourth victim, taken presumably while she was walking to her grandmother’s house. Remember what forensics said they found in the street?”

  “Holy shit,” one agent said.

  “Wait, let’s not assume,” Lockridge said.

  “Nuts of some kind, probably prepackaged,” the woman said. “Not cashews but something similar.”

  Kate had been in rooms where an a-ha moment had been reached. The feeling of electricity in the air never got old. She felt it rustling through the conference room in that moment as the team of agents shared looks of acknowledgment or stared at their laptop screens at the information they had accumulated.

  Sensing that she had more or less started rolling a small snowball down a steep hill, Kate went on.

  “So you start there. Go back to those gas stations and convenience stores. Some of them will likely be able to pull transaction records from as far back as a month. Align each purchase of those nuts to the security footage. That will give you a handful of suspects. After that…”

  “They can cross that bridge when they get there,” Duran said. “For now, Agent Wise, if you wouldn’t mind just giving them a quick criminal profile on Frank Costello.”

  “Of course,” she said. She reached back into her nearly flawless memory and saw the information from the case file. It was one that had stuck with her, as it had been pivotal to her career.

  Yet, even as she started detailing the trouble childhood that Frank Costello had endured, Kate’s mind went back to Roanoke. She started to once again focus on the murders that were taking place there. She had said something moments ago that was just now setting something ablaze in her mind.

  “Maybe it was right there in front of you the entire time but it looked so mundane and ordinary that you looked past it.”

  This thought swirled at the edges of her mind for the next half an hour as she told the room everything she knew about how Frank Costello had carried out his abductions and murders. Combined with the breakthrough she’d assisted with moments ago, she had no doubts that this highly capable team would have someone in custody within forty-eight hours.

  When she called the meeting to a close, the agents got up from the table quickly, anxious to get back out on the trail. Yet as everyone else cleared out, the tall woman hung back. She approached Kate with a look of apprehension as she slung her laptop bag over her shoulder.

  “Agent Wise,” she said. “I had to take the moment to introduce myself. My name is Rebecca Minor. I’ve been admiring your work since I first joined the academy. You’re the sole reason I wanted to pursue a career as a field agent rather than a lab tech, which is what I was originally going to be.”

  “Thank you,” Kate said, not sure how to take such a compliment.

  “I have to admit…I have a lot of your archived case files printed out and in a binder at home. I used them as study guides while I was at the academy.”

  “Well, it seems that they helped. You’re doing a fantastic job from what I can see. You’ll have this guy sooner than you think. You’re on the right path, you know. Just let it—”

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket, interrupting her. She gave an I’m sorry look to Agent Minor as she checked it. When she saw that the call was coming from DeMarco, she smiled wanly at Minor and turned away. She marched quickly to the back of the room and took the call.

  “Hi, DeMarco. How’s it going?”

  “Well, it could be better. He did it again.”

  “The killer?”

  “Yeah…”

  Kate looked back across the room to where Duran was still standing by the door. He saw her looking and the glance exchanged between them communicated everything. Before she even ended the call with DeMarco, Kate knew that she was heading back to Roanoke.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Kate felt a sense of unease spreading through her as she entered the driveway of the third murder scene. From the sight of the house alone, she could tell that there was something different about this one—that the killer had to have been incredibly motivated to strike here.

  First of all, the house was gorgeous. It was an enormous house, done in an altered Colonial style. The grass was perfectly cut and green, bordering the porch like something out of a gardening magazine. Behind the house, she could see the edge of a pond peeking out. The house was situated up on a hill, as if whoever lived inside felt the need to look out on top of the city of Roanoke, which sat to the east as just a tangle of shapes against the trees.

  It would have been a beautiful sight indeed if not for the presence of the two police cars and the black sedan. The sedan, she knew, was what DeMarco was driving. Kate parked behind the sedan and walked toward the house. As she made her way up the porch stairs, a policeman came out of the front door. She wasn’t too surprised to see that it was Palmetto. He looked tired but managed a smile when he saw her.

  “Agent Wise,” he said. “Good to see you again.”

  “Likewise,” she said. “You headed out?”

  “Yeah. I’m going to see if I can help relieve you guys of some of the monotony. I’m going to see what I can find out from family and friends of the newly deceased. Going to get a few of the local officers to assist. I’ll meet back up with you guys later today.”

  “Thanks for that,” Kate said as she headed inside the house.

  “Sure.” He regarded her with a strange look that made her think he meant to say something else. But he simply returned to his car and started the engine.

  Kate made her way into the house and quickly discovered that the interior was just as beautiful as the exterior. The front door led to a tall foyer that showed the full staircase leading upstairs. It was there, looking at her out over the railing, that DeMarco stood. A trail of drying blood led up the stairs to her, stopping at a crumpled shape at DeMarco’s feet.

  “How long have you been on the scene?” Kate asked, carefully making her way up the stairs. The blood was not in a simple single trail, but splattered here and there. As she reached the landing at the top of the stairs, the puddle grew thicker and darker.

  “A little over an hour I guess.”

  “Anyth
ing worthwhile?”

  “Not that I could find. There is a huge difference here, though—so different that I at first thought this murder was not related to the others. The victim’s name is Monica Knight. She’s a pretty big-time local lawyer. She also happens to be single. She was married for less than six months but her husband had an affair and left her. That was about twelve years ago, from what I’m being told.”

  “So not a couple this time?”

  “That’s right,” DeMarco said.

  Kate reached the landing and looked down to the body. She was lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling with wide eyes. She had been stabbed multiple times, with most of the attention given to her stomach. One grisly wound etched across her neck and that was where most of the blood seemed to have come from.

  “So, what makes it connect to the other murders?” Kate asked.

  DeMarco held up a plastic evidence baggie. There was yet another piece of the blanket inside of it. “It was rough,” she said. “It was shoved down her throat just like the others. The corner of it was sticking out of the wound in her throat. It had been shoved down in there so hard that one of her front teeth was loose.”

  “Any connection to the other victims?”

  “Nothing apparent. That’s what Palmetto is checking for us right now. He’s tried reaching out to the ex-husband to warn him that he might be in danger but so far there’s been no word.”

  Kate nodded and hunkered down into a squatting position. She looked closely at the victim’s face and frowned. Monica Knight was very pretty, aside from all the blood. It was apparent that she took good care of her blonde hair and her complexion. But Kate also noted that Monica’s beauty might come from another factor altogether.

  “Hold on. Do we know how old she is?”

  DeMarco scanned through some notes she had taken on her phone and said: “Thirty-nine.”

  “So she’s at least ten to fifteen years younger than the other victims,” Kate pointed out. “And single.”

  “Yeah, that seemed weird to me, too,” DeMarco said. “The piece of fabric in her throat directly ties her to the other victims but that’s where the connection ends.”