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I was jerked awake by a strange cell phone ringing in my room. I jumped, turning to see where I was exactly and where the cell phone was. I didn’t see it flashing in the dark, I could only hear it. It was coming from the little accent chair that was in the room.
Gabriel and I had sat up talking until the wee hours of the morning when he realized he didn’t have a room key with him. He was going to climb back over to his own balcony and stepped on a piece of metal that was rusting on my railing, which had prevented him from going back to his own room.
We’d decided he could sleep in my room so that he wouldn’t have to go down to the front desk and explain what had happened and why he was barefoot. He could get shoes from Xavier, they wore the same size, and have Xavier look at his foot in the morning. Xavier would find nothing weird about the situation, unlike the desk clerk.
The sun wasn’t up yet, the world beyond the balcony door was still dark. Phone calls at this time of the morning were never good phone calls. He finally got his cell phone out and answered it. I grabbed a shirt out of my bag and took it along with my gun holsters into my bathroom. I could wear my jeans for a second day, but my shirt would be noticeable if I wore it two days in a row.
It was a black T-shirt that said “History teaches us that we must learn from other people’s mistakes, because life is too short to make them all yourself.” I put a light weight flannel long sleeve shirt over it to hide my shoulder holster and guns. I didn’t bother to look at myself in the mirror. I took my hair out of the bun, swirled it around a few times and put the ponytail holder back on it in basically the exact same hairstyle I had worn the day before. No muss, no fuss, and I could brush it later.
“Dr. Durant was found murdered this morning by a guy walking his dog,” Gabriel said as I exited the bathroom. “His head was cut off.”
“How did a guy walking his dog find him murdered?” I asked.
“His body, including his head, was in a park near his condo.” Gabriel answered.
“Was he killed in the park?” I asked.
“They think so, there was a lot of blood at the scene.”
“And dead bodies don’t bleed all that well.” I nodded and we exited my hotel room. I shut the door. “Damn, I didn’t grab a key card to get back in.”
“Seriously?” He raised an eyebrow.
“You are a terrible influence.” I said as I walked across the hall and knocked on Xavier’s door. Xavier was his normal cheerful self when he opened the door. He was still fully dressed and I used the word still because it was the exact same shirt he’d been wearing the day before. In law enforcement, you learned to remember those tiny details that seem insignificant, like someone’s shirt. It didn’t take us long to get out to the car. Apparently for whatever reasons, the entire team had slept in their clothes, even the fastidious Lucas. Xavier grabbed a shirt that might have been clean and changed in the SUV.
“Something is off here,” Lucas said as Gabriel pulled out of the hotel parking lot.
“Two murders in two days, she’s devolved into a spree killer.” I said.
“Not about the case, I expected this. About you two. You’re smiling. He’s smiling. He woke you first and he never wakes you first. And you haven’t done much complaining about the sun not being up yet.” Lucas informed me.
“If you were an emotional being with needs, I’d accuse the two of you of having done the horizontal mambo last night. And Gabriel’s been bleeding from the foot, which actually strengthens the case for the horizontal mambo.” Xavier said.
“He didn’t wake me, his phone did. He was in my room, but he was asleep in the little chair and I was in my bed.”
“You don’t have to justify satisfying your naughty needful urges,” Xavier said.
“We both ended up on our adjoining balconies smoking late yesterday evening. Instead of coming around to my room through the front door to have a conversation, he climbed from his balcony to mine. But he didn’t grab his key card to get back into his room. In the wee hours of the morning, he tried to climb back over, stabbed his toe on something and started bleeding. He also nearly slipped. We both agreed that the middle of the wee hours of the morning was not exactly the best time to go get a new key card for his room, what with him being my supervisor and what not. We thought we’d wait until morning, when normal people are up and about before getting a new one.” I told them.
“You finally talked about the situation with Nyleena then?” Xavier said. “Good on ya.”
“Wow, what a terrible line,” I snipped at him.
“She knew.” Gabriel said.
“Told you so,” Fiona answered.
“That turned into a rather long conversation.” Gabriel sighed.
“During which she did something to make your foot bleed.” Lucas said.
“No, I really did hit it on something metal.” Gabriel replied. “A screw or something.”
“Maybe you should have your girlfriend sue them for having balconies that aren’t safe to climb around on,” Xavier said, smiling like the Cheshire Cat.
“You and her suck at the whole concept of a secret relationship,” I told him.
“We know.”
“Even Trevor and your mom know.” Fiona said.
“You thought I was that oblivious?” I asked Gabriel, mostly.
“Yes, they did, no clue why.” Xavier offered.
“That’s just hurtful.” I said.
“Why were you smiling? It’s not like you to grin before the sun makes an appearance if you aren’t kicking down a door or tasering someone.” Fiona said.
“Because these are the types of killings I expect from this killer.” I told her. “I know everyone has their own opinion on why serial killers kill, but these types of killings are rage killings, which is what I would expect of a killer who has been traumatized repeatedly throughout their life. The others were too controlled, too neat and clean.”
“Neat and clean must be subjective,” Gabriel said.
“I think she means that you don’t expect a sexual sadist to cut off someone’s head without a really good reason. It’s a lot of work, so there has to be a reason if it’s being done. The other killings were about punishment, not rage. So why inject them with acid and hang around letting it work? Now though, the killer is killing purely out of rage.” Lucas explained and I just sat and silently nodded.
“For the record, Ace left out the best part of her story. This morning, just as soon as the door shut, she realized she hadn’t grabbed the key for her room either and blamed it on me.” Gabriel said as we pulled into a huge parking lot next to a massive condominium complex. There were two dozen assorted vehicles with their lights on; cop cars, fire rescue trucks, as well as one ambulance and the coroner’s van.
As soon as we got out, an officer in uniform came running towards us. The FBI agent was there talking to Kimberly. Kimberly waved to us.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for Dr. Cain, I’m supposed to escort him to the body.” The uniformed officer said.
“Well, Dr. Cain is a she and I think you have her confused with Dr. Reece, he’s the medical doctor. My doctorate is in history.” I replied.
“I don’t know about Dr. Reece or any of the other stuff, I’m just doing what I was told.” The officer answered.
“Told by who?” Gabriel asked.
“The director of the NSA is here, sir, he asked for Dr. Cain.”
“If Peter chases me out of that copse of trees with a severed head, we might need a new director of the NSA.” I said as I took a step forward.
“Does that sound like something Peter West is likely to do?” Gabriel asked.
“Well, when we were all kids, Malachi and Peter once chased me around carrying a dead possum, so I never rule anything out.” I offered.
“That doesn’t sound like the Peter West I know,” Fiona said.
“Well it was 20 years ago or so. And I think the idea might have mostly been Malachi’s. But I have yet to forget it and I just wanted to put someone on notice, in case.” I said taking off after the officer.
Peter didn’t have a severed head. There was a ton of blood though in this area. The ground was coated in it. Work lights had been set up, making the area very bright. Peter was standing about ten feet from where the blood started.
“I know, you can’t imagine why I’m here or why I sent someone to get you,” Peter said before I could say a word.
“That about covers it, what’s up?” I asked.
“I wanted to have a private chat and maybe talk to you about a favor.” Peter stepped backwards, away from the crime scene. He still hadn’t looked at me. Despite the fact that Malachi had giantism, Peter was short. He was only a couple of inches taller than me, so he might have been 5 feet, 6 inches tall, with his shoes on.
“Well that’s a terrifying prospect.”
“I know, I cannot imagine owing you a favor, but it scares me less than owing Malachi a favor.” Peter told me.
“Just so we’re clear, I don’t do things that are illegal when I can help it.”
“No, nothing like that, I’m the head of the NSA, I can get illegal favors from just about anywhere. I need a favor related to this case.”
“Oh boy,” I said.
“I think there’s a second victim.” Peter finally met my eyes. He pointed to the giant area of blood coated ground. “And I think she might be one of my agents.”
“This is where things get dicey, you can’t tell me why she was with Dr. Durant or what she is doing here or anything that might help us find her.” I said.
“Something like that. It’s probably not as bad as you think. I don’t think Dr. Durant was killed by your serial killer, I think someone wanted to make it look like your serial killer.”
“Okay, out with everything you can tell me.” I said.
“Aislinn,” Peter said my name and then just stopped. “Durant wasn’t squeaky clean. We’ve been monitoring him for a while, we suspected him of spying using information he received from his clients through that fancy hospital he runs. A few weeks ago, we received a coded message from someone inside the hospital regarding things we suspected but couldn’t yet prove. It took a while to break the cypher, once we had, it gave us information that could lead to his arrest. But we couldn’t figure out who sent the cipher. An FBI agent was tapped to go undercover at the hospital. She disappeared late last night from the hospital. One of the nurses said that Dr. Durant released her. That was about an hour before my guy, pretending to walk his dog, found Dr. Durant’s body. We waited roughly another thirty minutes to call it in. During which time, we sat here wondering where all the blood came from.”
“You think some of it belongs to the FBI agent you sent undercover.” I made it a statement.
“Yes.” Peter said.
“What does that have to do with Durant’s murder and us?”
“I think he was killed by a drug dealer he was feeding information to. Our agent fed Dr. Durant some bad intel as part of the undercover op. The drug dealer killed both of them.”
“But that theory has some holes, like how did the dealer know to remove Durant’s head, that bit wasn’t released to the public and why didn’t her handler know she was in trouble.” I stated.
“Exactly,” Peter said. “We suspect the dealer might be working with a corrupt cop. I need you to say you don’t think this was the work of the girl you’re chasing. The FBI and NSA are investigating, but if you start telling everyone this wasn’t your killer, we hope it puts pressure on the cop and they make a mistake.”
“Because tracking down a serial killer with multiple personalities isn’t difficult enough,” I said.
“I know, it sucks.” Peter said. “But, if we’re right, this will pass as one of her killings and the real killer will get away with it.”
“Why not take it to Gabriel?” I asked.
“Because even if Gabriel does this particular song and dance perfectly, his opinion doesn’t carry as much weight as yours.” Peter said. “It has to be you or Lucas, and right now, Lucas isn’t very happy with me.”
“What did you do to Lucas?” I asked him, narrowing my eyes.
“Nothing, exactly.” Peter looked at his shoes. “We hired Trevor to do some freelance work for us. He is an amazing puzzle master. We have him working on a cypher we received from overseas intelligence officers who were murdered.”
“Why did you recruit Trevor?” I asked.
“Shortly before the incident at the Fortress, Trevor came to my house one night to let me know he had cracked one of the uncracked Zodiac cyphers. It gave us the guy’s name. But if Trevor’s right, it’s a guy that has never been on any suspect list before and he was an NSA agent at the time of the killings, working in California. It’s not information that even Malachi, Gabriel, or you could have gotten hold of, so he couldn’t have made it up. Meaning either Trevor really did crack the cypher or is magical.”
“He is a bit magical.” I nodded.
“That’s why he and Lucas separated temporarily. Trevor wanted to do it and Lucas didn’t want him to.” I said.
“Pretty much.”
“Ok, I’ll do this. And I will talk to Lucas. I will not let you ruin a good marriage simply because you suffer from an excruciating form of ‘ends justifies the means.’”
“You are amazing.” Peter said. I walked away.
My team was standing with Kimberly. There was an animated discussion going on. Kimberley looked at me. I didn’t smile. I tried not to frown.
“What does Peter want?” Lucas asked.
“Later, you and I will talk. Right now, there’s too much blood for Durant to be the only victim.” I said.
“Yeah, that’s what the ME just told us, especially since Durant was dead when his head was removed.” Xavier said. “Can I go see the body now?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“The NSA has a small stake in this case now. It’s very small. They are hoping to recover an FBI agent alive, but I’m guessing it is probably way too late for that.”
“Durant was working for the NSA?” Gabriel asked.
“No, Durant was selling secrets he was getting out of his more valuable clients at his clinic to drug dealers. The agent was sent undercover, now Durant is dead and she’s missing.” I sighed. “Which means, this isn’t our killer.”
“Complicated,” Lucas said. I nodded. “However, if there were two people murdered and only one body was found, I agree this isn’t our killer.”
“Yes, well the NSA is hoping to panic the real killer by having me declare it isn’t our serial. They think my opinion carries weight for some reason.”
“Do you think it’s our serial?” Gabriel asked.
“At the moment, I don’t know. I only know what West told me and that had the taint of his bias.” I said.
We all turned and walked into the woods. It was a narrow area of woods, maybe the size of a football field. Not huge by any means. But a nice change from the city. The body was in a bag. Xavier was kneeling down near it, it was open, exposing pale white skin.
“Okay, he was alive when someone took a chainsaw to him,” Xavier announced. “They didn’t just take off his head, he has defensive wounds on his hands, arms, legs, and torso.
“That explains all the blood,” I said.
“Yeah, it does.”
“Then the agent might still be alive.” I told West. West was paler than the dead body in the bag.
“Alive when someone did this?”
“Yeah and not our killer.” I told him.
“Director, I think you guys can handle it from there,” Lucas said to the much smaller man. They were standing very close and Lucas looked angry. I couldn’t blame him, I might be pretty pissed. Well, no, actually. If Trevor wanted to work as a code breaker for the NSA, then Trevor should be able to work as a code breaker with the NSA. Especially, if he was really that good and I suspected he was.
We ate lunch at a sub place, Kimberly didn’t think she could handle a full meal after looking closely at the body in the bag. I could understand that. Some people did better with blood and guts than others. Kimberly, I was sure, had seen her fair share of it, but chainsaws were messy murder weapons. Xavier’s appetite, on the other hand, seemed unshakeable. He was wolfing down a huge triple meat sub with extra cheese and just about every topping the place had on it. Lucas was sitting across from me at the table and glaring at me.
