Ilse was practically jogging as she entered the Seattle field office, springing off the elevator and moving down the hall into the large, cubicle-filled office space. She'd made sure her client hadn't felt rushed, but then she'd—much against the usual grain of her character—pushed the speed limit to reach the office.
Figures were moving about, and her gaze darted towards the large office at the back of the room, where she spotted an athletic figure behind a standing desk. She swallowed, staring towards Agent Rawley's silhouette, but before she could approach, a voice called from an open door in a darker portion of the hall behind her.
“Hey, Beck!”
She turned, glancing towards the small, utility closet which had been converted into Agent Tom Sawyer's office.
She glanced again towards Rawley, but the man wasn't moving, standing rigid like a statue, facing his computer.
With a sigh, she turned, moving in the direction of Sawyer's makeshift office.
Agent Tom Sawyer sat wedged behind a desk which was almost as large as the room itself, with barely a couple of inches between the left edge of the desk and the wall.
The lanky, thin-framed FBI operative was leaning back in his chair, his booted feet resting on his table, his legs crossed. He had a laptop on his jeans-clad legs and wore his flannel shirt buttoned to the top. His ever-present baseball cap was tilted back, revealing his uncombed, sandy hair jutting every which way towards the single lightbulb in the janitorial closet-turned office space.
The man studied his computer, his posture relaxed, except for his eyebrows above his green eyes. His face always had a stubborn look about it, even when he was on his own in the dark.
“Tom,” she said, nodding in greeting. The last time the two of them had spoken, Agent Sawyer had revealed a piece of his own troubled past. A serial killer had murdered his sister. Sawyer still blamed himself to this day.
But now, as she watched him, he just looked up, mildly irritated.
“You're late,” he said in his usual laconic way.
“Sorry about that. I told Rawley, but I had a client.”
“Mhmm.”
“Is... Is Rawley...”
“Pissed?”
“Yeah.”
“Nah. Hard to get Rawley pissed.”
Ilse nodded, brushing at her dark hair. Unless you punch him, I imagine, she thought to herself, remembering stories of Sawyer's own interactions with the field office chief. She still wasn't sure why Sawyer had once punched his boss. Nor did she understand why he was allowed back at the field office. But the reason for his cramped office space... that was plain enough.
“So...” she said hesitantly, “Rawley said there was a case?”
“Mhmm. Where you been?”
“Excuse me?”
Sawyer lowered the lid of his laptop where it glowed against his skin. He studied her, adjusting the brim of his baseball cap. “Where,” he said, slower, “you been?”
“I—umm, on vacation.”
“You weren't home.”
“Right, like I said, I was on vacation—hang on, how do you know I wasn't home?”
Sawyer shrugged. “Stopped by.”
Ilse blinked, staring at the man. She waited, expecting him to fill in the blanks, but he declined to do so and instead tilted the laptop lid again with a flick of his finger and resumed his study of the contents therein.
For a moment, she wondered if she ought to press the issue. Sawyer hadn't stopped by before. Had it been a social call? Was it something to do with a different case? Or had he wanted to talk about their last conversation?
“You know... I didn't tell anyone,” Ilse said, cautiously, trying to read the man behind the desk. “About—about anything. I keep secrets for a living.”
Sawyer looked at her, his lips pursed. For a moment, she thought he might be dismissive of this too. Nothing about his expression seemed vulnerable or emotive in any way. But instead of saying anything, he just met her gaze and gave the faintest of nods. So faint, she wasn't sure he hadn't simply shifted his head.
But then he glanced back at the computer. “Got a case,” he said. “Been doing some reading while you were running late.”
“I had a client.”
“Right. Anyway, we got two dead.”
He spun the laptop now and placed it on the top of his scarred and scraped desk. There were no ornaments, no pictures on this desk at all. It was just a hunk of wood for all intents and purposes.
Now, though, Ilse leaned in, her hands pressing the scarred wooden surface as she braced herself, peering at the images on the laptop.
She winced as she did, feeling her stomach turn. “How awful,” she murmured.
“Yup. First one is the left. Second the right.”
Ilse nodded vaguely to show she'd heard, but mostly she just stared at the coroner's photos. Both of the bodies had been brutally stabbed. There were gouge marks in their chests. In the case of the woman—though it was hard to recognize her as a female from the photo alone—her face had been punctured again and again.
“Is... is he using a knife?” Ilse whispered, feeling her stomach churn. She resisted a sudden urge to burp and instead turned away from the photographs on the screen, staring at Sawyer now, eyes wide.
Sawyer shrugged. “Looks like. First victim,” his long finger tapped the left side of the screen from behind, “was a marathon runner. Stabbed in the lung, then chopped up—as you can see. The second,” the same finger moved, tapping the right, “was a fashion model. Assaulted in her dressing room. No sexual motive so far.”
“Sadistic, though,” Ilse murmured.
“Come again?”
She pointed. “The first stab is to the lung according to the report here—am I reading that right?”
“Yeah, you are. What about it?”
“Well... it's measured, controlled. To work as a therapist, we do have some basic anatomy training. Taking the lung takes their breath, incapacitates them... Which then gives him the time to do the rest of... of this...”
“Hmm,” Sawyer grunted. “So, you're saying he's a sadist?”
“With rage issues, yes. It starts out as a power thing,” she murmured. “That's why the lung. But then... then he just...,” she trailed off, staring grim-faced at the crime-scene photos.
“Loses control?” Sawyer ventured.
Ilse winced but nodded. “That's about right.”
“Great,” Sawyer sighed. “A sadist with anger management issues. Definitely the sort to stop after two, yeah?”
Ilse snorted, shaking her head. “We should be so lucky,” she murmured. “No—no. If he's killed two, there's no reason to think he would stop now. Unless. Were the victims connected in any way?”
Sawyer reached over the lid of the screen now, tapping an arrow key. The browser tab shifted, and now Ilse found herself studying two dissimilar photos. The man's face was thin, athletic, not quite unlike Agent Rawley. His jaw was pronounced, his cheeks sharp. He wasn't handsome but wasn't ugly either.
The woman on the other hand was blonde, or at least pretended to be. She had a perfectly sculpted nose, cheeks, eyes. Everything about her seemed so... intentional. Like studying a first-year art student's rendering of a bowl of fruit. A bit too... perfect. None of the characteristic blemishes so often accompanying real life.
Ilse studied the beautiful woman—she was young, though it was difficult to tell from all the work that had been done. The man was middle-aged. He also had red hair. Arthur Lehman. She re-read the name beneath the file. She glanced at the woman. Adelaide Stevens.
“So they're not related?” Ilse said.
“Not family at least. But bodies were found in a twenty-mile distance.”
“So pretty close to each other.”
“Right. But no connection we found otherwise.”
Ilse crossed her arms, nodding and studying the two pictures. Their healthy, smiling faces were so different than the first two photos she'd seen. Studying them now, she felt a jolt of grief.
How many of her own clients had escaped a similar fate by the skin of their teeth? What about Ilse herself? Most of her family was dead or in prison or insane. She'd somehow escaped. Barely.
Sometimes it was worth focusing on the survivors... Other times, it was about catching the bad guys so there were no victims to begin with.
“So we think it's the same guy for sure?” Ilse asked. “Because of the stab wound to the lung?”
“Yeah—seems so. Guy is bold too. The man was killed while on a jog in the middle of the afternoon. The woman was killed in the morning on a photoshoot set with people all around.”
“I see. So sadistic, rageful, but also brash.”
Sawyer nodded at her, slowly rising to his feet and closing the lid to his laptop. “Not a great outlook. But yeah, seems so. You good, doc? Need more vacation days or wanna come with?”
Ilse frowned. She wasn't sure what he was implying, but a second later she caught the twinkle in his eye and realized he was just teasing. She flashed a smile, rolling her eyes. And though part of her felt the shared amusement, simply because she was fond of Sawyer, another part of her wondered at her initial reaction. She slipped back into the hall as Sawyer hopped his desk, slipping off the other side, and tilting his cap forward now. He smelled of sandalwood and sawdust. His stubborn green eyes studied her closely from beneath the hat.
“You good?”
She smiled again, this time less forced. “Yeah—where are we headed?”
“Second crime scene is freshest,” Sawyer said. “Her trailer is still cordoned off—figure we can start there.”
“Sounds good. Lead the way.”
***
They were in Sawyer's vehicle this time, and Ilse kept shooting glances out of the corner of her eye towards the sandy-haired agent. He wasn't a very talkative sort. He'd often described himself as a man of action. He'd said he was married to the job.
But Ilse knew men like Sawyer. She'd spent time with them. There were millions of types of people in the world, but one reductive way to divide them: predators and protectors. She often had to fight the urge to think of everyone in those terms or as someone on the path to become one or the other.
Sawyer was a protector. And he hunted predators.
Now, as he stared through the windshield, his jaw tight, his eyes fixed on the gray roads swishing by as they moved through the Seattle city streets, she glimpsed his true nature just beneath.
She also, now, could spot the pain that was always there, lingering. The same sort of pain, of trauma she'd experienced in the past. The same sort of pain she'd often had to keep back with her own will and effort.
Now that she knew the source of it, Ilse wanted nothing more than to reach out and hug the man. Or at least to talk to him about it, to help him feel better.
“So,” she said carefully, biting her lip. “How are you?”
He glanced at her, raised an eyebrow. Then looked back to the road. “Constipated,” he said.
She blinked then he smirked and kept driving, picking up the pace.
Perhaps now wasn't the time... Sawyer clearly wasn't in the sharing mood. Still, her heart went out to him. But like Sawyer, while she wasn't a man, she was a protector too. The two of them had put devils behind bars in the past. Like guardian angels, hunting down wrongdoers.
Every time she received a postcard, received taunting from overseas, either by her father or at his command, it only filled her with an even greater sense of resolve to make sure men like him weren't allowed to continue harming others.
“Constipated,” she muttered. “Try prune juice.”
“Didn't know you'd take such an interest in my digestive system,” Sawyer quipped. “Hang on doc, we're merging.”
She gripped the arm rest, leaning to the side as he pulled sharply behind a truck, ignoring the blare of a horn, and then sped up the ramp, circling the Eastern front of the city, and moving in the direction of the set.