Already Dead, page 10
He laid her down gently, supporting her head to the last and then smoothing out her hair, letting it fan around her head like she was a princess in a book. Which she was, of course. She was a princess to him. Now, no one would ever be able to treat her otherwise.
He laid a hand on her forehead carefully for a moment, as if to make sure that she was resting as peacefully as she could. Then he arranged her arms, crossing them over on her chest so that they formed a kind of cup, a space where the candle could sit without falling. Rigor mortis was only just beginning to set in, but once it was complete, she would hold the candle still and safe. It would be quick enough now that he knew he could set her up and leave her, letting her take the same rest as the others.
He placed the candle where it needed to be and tightened her arms just a little, checking his work. She looked peaceful. Content, even. Perfect. She was never again going to be at risk of losing this. As she was now, so she would be forever in the memories of those who knew her. Young, beautiful, and perfect. That was a part of it all, a gift that he hoped would satisfy them as they looked down on him and what he had done from above.
It was time to light the candle. He stood reverentially above her to take out the box of matches from his pocket, selecting one in the dim light that seemed to be a good fit. He struck it against the side of the box until it flared into life, a burst of orange which pushed the darkness backwards.
He stooped to light the candle and touched the match to the wick, waiting for it to catch. When it did, he drew away slowly, making sure that it had stuck and wasn’t going to blow out immediately.
He cursed, shaking his hand in the air as he dropped the match, feeling the burn on his fingers. It had only been for a moment, and he suspected there was no real damage, but the match was gone into the darkness, skittering across the ground and going out before he had a chance to see where it had landed. It was somewhere outside the small circle of light cast by the candle; he could lift the candle now to check for it, but that would mean taking it out of Cici’s hands, and it was burning already, and he might not be able to get it back in if he did that.
He crouched low, brushing his fingers over the ground, feeling the rough surface and trying to identify one thing that should not be there. But before he found it, he heard voices nearby – voices coming back, no doubt, to one of the cars parked around him.
The match was gone, and he wasn’t going to find it before they reached him.
He had to decide whether to let it go – and fast.
With one last internal curse, he cast a last glance at the floor and, seeing nothing, started to run on swift and quiet feet as far as he could get from the glow of Cici’s candle.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Laura slouched in the chair she had been given, trying to rest her lower back. There was nothing like a long flight and a long day on a case to give you an ache that wouldn’t stop.
“Where else do we look?” Agent Won asked. He was back to being grumbly, acting like he couldn’t sit still. The boy obviously wanted to shoot off and take action on some other front. Not for the first time and almost certainly not for the last, Laura missed Nate with a deep-seated ache in her chest. If he was here, he would be thinking of ways to attack the problem alongside her, not waiting for her lead.
“Check over the employee records,” Laura suggested. She had little hope it would yield anything else, if the locals had already looked, but it was something for Agent Won to do. “Maybe look for something that isn’t obvious. Someone missing work when they were supposed to be in over the last few days, for example, or being late for their shift. Or leaving early. Even someone who booked an off holiday. Those kinds of things.”
“Okay,” Agent Won sighed, with a tone in his voice that suggested he wasn’t as fooled by her attempt to keep him busy as she’d hoped he would be.
She could worry about whether she was hurting his feelings later. Right now, she needed to put her own thinking cap on and figure this out. The candle factory was a bust, it seemed – Toby Martins had been processed and was under arrest for a number of drug and theft charges, but that had nothing to do with their case. It might have been exciting for the locals, who didn’t see much of those types of cases, but their excitement was short-lived too. There was a kind of pall hanging over the small office – too small to even call it a bullpen – where Laura and Agent Won had been allowed to set up shop.
Laura tried to think, knitting her brows together. The candle. What did the candle mean? She knew it had to have something to do with her vision. What did the placement in public spaces mean? There had to be a meaning behind it, something that Laura hadn’t grasped yet. Exhibition? Or care?
The blood, too – the blood had to go somewhere, because the throats were clearly cut at a different location. And what about the fact he had knocked them out first? That had to be a link they could follow, tracking down who had purchased large quantities of the drug required. Then again, Toby Martins had just effectively demonstrated that the drug trade in Pacific Cove wasn’t exactly under control. Maybe that, too, would be hard to trace.
She had to start somewhere. Laura took a breath, ultimately deciding on –
A sharp crackle cut through the air, a dispatch radio on a desk lighting up and blaring out a message.
“All units, all units, we have a ten-one-hundred. Parking lot by the gas station on Ocean View Boulevard. Please respond.”
Ten-one-hundred. Laura knew that code.
A dead body had been found.
It was like the feeling of a train slamming into her at full speed. Another body. Another failure. They’d let someone down in the worst possible way tonight. Laura closed her eyes only for a moment, because a moment was all she had before they had to get moving.
“Won,” she hissed, leaping out of her chair and grabbing his arm to make him follow. He dropped his paperwork in a rush as Laura nodded at Detective Waters and his partner, indicating for them to come along with. They would need a guide. Someone to take them to the scene as quickly as possible. Following a police car with its lights and siren blaring would help immensely with that.
But no matter how quickly they got there, Laura knew: they’d run out of time. They’d failed. The killer had struck again, and they hadn’t been able to stop him.
***
It was dark still as they descended on the scene, casting the parking lot in the unnatural red and blue glow of the police lights. There were a couple of civilians huddled at one side, near a parked car; in front of them, unmistakable even in the gloom, was the body.
With the candle still lit.
Laura jumped out of the car practically in the same motion as switching the engine off, and Agent Won was already ahead of her. They raced over, beating Detective Waters and his partner – who seemed reluctant to even approach now. She couldn’t say she blamed them. She was sure it would hit different when you were walking up to see the body of someone you knew. Being an FBI agent had that anonymity to its advantage.
Laura took in the scene as much as she could in the moment, wanting to preserve it in her head. There was one light at the far end of the parking lot, high up and powerful enough to cast just enough glow to be able to see by, though it was a pale kind of seeing. The kind that the moon could provide on clear nights: everything bathed in a strange monochrome. The body lay on the ground, placed just so, the hair fanned out around the head and the limbs positioned straight. She was holding a candle, like the others. It had been long enough for some drops of wax to run down the side of the candle and onto her hands. Her eyes were closed, as though she was only sleeping.
Laura had to admit there was a strange kind of beauty to the scene. A peace. The body looked as though it was meant to be here, even if it was totally incongruous in the middle of a parking lot. Laura got down onto her knees beside the body, ducking her head to examine it as much as she could. Was there any sign here? Anything that she should be seeing? Anything that, so far, she had missed?
“Detective Waters?” she called out. He moved to her side with a slow kind of reverence. He did not seem unhurried, but only solemn in the presence of the body.
He seemed to know what she was asking before she had to voice it more clearly. “I recognize her. It’s Cecilia Powers. She works at the gas station.”
Laura looked up in the direction he was pointing, to see a gas station in the distance. Close enough that she could make out the lights, far enough that she had no hope of reading the signage. It looked like an island in the darkness. Between here and there it was all black, nothing illuminating it at all.
“I want you to do these three things, in order,” she said, keeping her voice calm so he would listen and obey. “First, call the station and get everyone else down here after us. Second, talk to our two witnesses over there and get them to tell you everything they saw. If they saw a person around here at all, you need to come get me so I can hear it for myself. And third, when everyone else arrives, we need a scene of crime established from here all the way back to the gas station. Everything needs locking down and cordoning off – no one crosses this area until we’ve done a thorough search. Got it?”
“Got it,” Detective Waters said. He sounded unbearably sad. He lingered a moment longer. “She was just a normal girl. Lived here for years with her family. I’ve been served by her more times than I can count.”
“I’m sorry, Detective,” Laura said softly. She looked up at him in the gloom. His eyes hadn’t left Cecilia’s face. “Now, please. Do what I’ve asked, and let’s get her some justice – and stop this from happening again.”
That did the trick. Waters moved off, leaving only Won on the other side of the body. He had crouched too, trying to see what he could see.
“Should I blow out the candle?” he asked.
“Yes,” Laura said. “Carefully, though. We don’t want to contaminate any evidence.”
She got back to her feet as he did so. She could already see that this body was just like the other two. They would wait for the report from the coroner to confirm it, of course, but it looked like she had been through the same process: knocked out, throat cut and drained, moved here to be put on display with the candle.
It was ghoulish. But there was something more to it. Something about the way she had been placed. And there was some kind of connection between the three victims so far, too: they had all worked in jobs that allowed them to interact with members of the public, in customer-facing roles. Serving. Was that something? Laura couldn’t tell yet, but it stood out to her. There had to be something here.
“It’s late,” she said. “He’s already struck again, so we can’t save anyone else tonight, and we’re going to have to wait for the coroner’s report to learn anything new from her body. I don’t think we should talk to the family right away, not when they’re going to have to digest this news. And to be honest, I don’t even know how much use they’ll be. It’s becoming clearer that this, whatever it is, isn’t just some personal vendetta against the victims themselves. If it was, we’d have dug something up by now. A rumor, at least.”
“What if people don’t know about the link?” Agent Won asked, standing back up to her level.
“In a small town like this?” Laura scanned the horizon, the darkness, the faint glow in the distance where one or two properties – likely on main street – still had their lights on. “People talk. And we haven’t heard anything. Anyway, my point is, as much as I hate to say it, we need to get some sleep.”
Wasn’t this a turn up for the books? It was normally Nate having to tell Laura not to push herself too far, reminding her that humans need sleep to function and to think properly. Now she was the one doing it. Things were upside down, and she hated it.
“Alright,” Agent Won shrugged, apparently not in any big rush to get back to the case like she would have been in most situations. “I’ll go look up the motel’s address so we can find it on the GPS.”
Laura nodded distantly, letting him go. She took one more look down at Cecilia Powers, who was still lying in that same peaceful position. It was far from peaceful, really, she knew. But there was something about it. Something she couldn’t yet put her finger on.
Laura turned to go, but as she did, something caught her eye. The beams of the car headlights, left on when they’d both parked, were striking the ground nearby; and there was something there. Something small, like a twig of some kind, only about a quarter inch long. Laura stooped to pick it up, bringing it closer to her face in the gloom to examine it – or try to. It was blackened, twisted. She couldn’t see much from it in the darkness, but –
“Agent Frost?” Agent Won called out. “I’ve got the car set up. We can go.”
Laura nodded, turning around to show him that she’d heard, and then took an evidence bag out of her inside jacket pocket. She always had one or two in there, just in case. She tucked the twig away, not knowing exactly why, but feeling like she should.
She walked over to the car to get inside, her mind already on the morning and what it would bring. More clues, she hoped, though she wasn’t exactly optimistic. And while her visions seemed to have no trouble coming through right now, they weren’t at all useful; seeing flames being snuffed out really gave her nothing, which probably meant they had so far come nowhere close at all to catching their killer.
If he stayed on target with his timeline, they had another forty-eight hours before they would be standing at another crime scene just like this one, blowing out a candle placed on top of another dead local girl. And if he didn’t stick to the same rules, perhaps because he was escalating or because he knew the FBI were on the case and wanted to get his timeline moving along quicker, then it could be a lot less. That meant that every second counted.
Wasting so many of them asleep weighed on Laura’s conscience, as it always did – but there was little for them to do.
With a good night’s sleep, space to think, and distance, Laura was confident her investigative brain was going to kick in where her psychic brain had failed her.
And if it didn’t?
It was going to be a long two days before she got any rest again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Laura stretched her stiff muscles over her head, trying to work out the kinks with the sea breeze in her nose. It was a different kind of way to wake up, a little nicer than the class of motel they were used to. It seemed there was no such thing as an absolute dive in Pacific Cove – even the cheapest option the FBI was willing to shell out for had comfortable beds and an ocean view.
None of which mattered at all, because you had to actually sleep in those comfortable beds to get the benefit of them, and Laura had hardly been able to. She’d tossed and turned all night, waking fitfully from dreams of unseen killers putting candles on girls and lighting them on fire. Like her subconscious was trying to tell her something – just not something that actually gave her any insight.
She was still struggling to see the connection between the victims, and it irked her that she hadn’t found it yet. Three was a charm, though. And maybe, she thought, Cecilia Powers’s family would be able to help her figure it out. She wasn’t ruling out the potential of their testimony just yet.
She moved to the room next door and knocked on it, waiting for Agent Won to answer. It was early still, but the sun was rising, and that meant it was time to go. Part of the reason for her sleepless night had been the fact that she knew the killer was still out there. Maybe looking for his victim even now. She knew from the initial reports that the first victims were killed only within an hour of being found, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t change things up. That was the worst, scariest part about working cases like these: never knowing when the rug would be pulled out from under your feet, when it would be too late again.
There was no answer from Agent Won. Laura moved to the side, to the small window with its quaint lacy curtains and white-painted frame. Cupping her hands around her head, she could just about see the floor of the room through the lace, though nothing more than that.
What she did see was a pair of black suit pants left lying on the floor, and a couple of discarded men’s shoes beside them. Agent Won was definitely not dressed. She paused a moment, listening, putting her ear closer to the door.
She heard a faint snoring, and almost rolled her eyes right back into her head with the force of how it hit her. He was still asleep.
Damn rookies.
Laura sighed, shaking her head to herself. Her options were few. She could either wake him and wait for him to get ready before she started her day, which could take a while – or she could just get on with it and leave him to catch up later.
It would be a good lesson, she thought. That if you slept in you got left behind. Next time, he could set an alarm, make sure he was awake at an appropriate time. She nodded to herself at this decision, turning to get into their rental car alone.
She looked at her cell phone as she started the engine, waiting for the car to warm up just a touch. It was chilly outside, and while she did enjoy the bracing nature of it, it wasn’t comfortable for long. She scrolled through her conversation with Nate – if you could call it a conversation; lately it was just her asking him to call her, over and over again, begging him to talk about his transfer. There still had been no reply. No sign that he had even thought about trying to contact her.
And then there was one message on her phone, one that made her bite her lip. It was from Chris, telling her he was looking forward to seeing her tonight if she was back in the state. The question mark at the end of the text message let her know that he was expecting an answer, but she couldn’t give him one. Not just yet.
If she said something now, it would be no. She’d have to cancel. And she didn’t want to do that. She wanted to get this case solved before lunchtime, jump on a plane, and get back to Washington, D.C., in time to have dinner with him. It was selfish, she knew. But she’d been looking forward to their date.
_preview.jpg)
