Already Dead, page 15
Laura shook her head impatiently, feeling like she needed a diagram of some kind at this point to figure out exactly what he was thinking. “Do you care to explain any of this to me?”
“Sure,” Eric said, breezily, clearly not picking up on her annoyance. “I found him while going through the records of local crimes, like we said. He’s a bit of a petty criminal with a small record, but it didn’t show up on our first search because of his age. He’s only twenty-one, and the majority of his crimes happened before he was eighteen, so they were juvenile records.”
Laura nodded; she was with him so far. At least, she understood. It might have been nice if she’d literally been with him, given that he’d seemingly acted on all this discovery without his senior agent present. “And what were those records?”
“Vandalism, for the most part,” Eric said. “He was known for setting small fires. It only came up because I was talking with Detective Waters, and he remembered this little kid that got in trouble for setting a fire in the school gym. Turns out it wasn’t his first or his last offense.”
“Okay,” Laura said slowly. “And his connection to our victims?”
“He was at school with Cici Powers,” Eric said, his grin only getting wider. He really was impressed with himself on this one. “And as for the other two, he was a frequent customer at both the diner and the coffee shop. I know we pointed out already that a lot of the locals are, but given his age, he’d be more likely to interact with them on a closer level.”
Laura glanced across the other side of the room, to where this suspect was still talking to the other cops. She saw one of them push a fingerprint pad towards him. “Who is this kid?”
“Jonas Mendez,” Eric supplied readily. “He was at home when we went and knocked on the door. He seemed surprised to see us at first, and everything was fine. But when I tried to arrest him, that’s when he ran.”
“And fell,” Laura said, raising an eyebrow at that muddy tear in his pants.
“Yeah, he tripped over himself,” Eric said with a chuckle. “Can you believe that? Anyway, it wasn’t hard to bring him in.”
“What has he said so far?” Laura asked, wishing she wasn’t playing catchup. She trusted her own instincts far more than anyone else’s. If she had seen things first-hand, she could make much better judgement calls about them.
“He just babbled some things about being innocent and having no idea why we were taking him in,” Eric shrugged. “Just like you’d expect a murderer to say, really.”
“Alright,” Laura said, glancing over. The local cops were finishing up processing the kid’s details. “I need you to show me everything you have on him right away – records, proof of interaction, all of it. Then I’ll go and talk to him.”
Eric frowned slightly. “You mean, we’ll go talk to him, right?”
“No,” Laura said. “I mean, me. You’ve already gone against what we agreed by going ahead and arresting someone on your own instead of calling me first. You know I’m the senior agent. We should have discussed this beforehand.”
“Why?” Eric asked, his facing dropping. He looked like a kid getting told off himself. “I could tell it was him. I thought you’d want me to use my initiative.”
“There’s such a thing as strategy, Agent Won,” Laura said. “For example, the kind of strategy that doesn’t end up with our suspect getting injured in the case, leaving us open to criticism, if we can help it.”
Agent Won made a little movement with his mouth as if he was going to argue back, but then clamped it shut and led her over to the computer. There on the screen was everything he had: the juvenile arrest records, the school records, everything he had on Jonas Mendez.
Which, yes, was a little suspicious. He was known for starting small fires. But none of them had any connection to candles, there was no sign of violence in his past, and Laura couldn’t see that there was much in it besides a teenager acting out for attention.
She glanced at Eric, at how he stood with his hands on his hips, waiting for her to come around to his side. He looked supremely confident. And, yes, on the surface of it, there was a lot here to be suspicious of.
But like she’d told him before, he just didn’t have the experience. He wasn’t used to profiling, to understanding the difference between a petty criminal and a killer. To seeing the red flags in someone’s past, the same things that tended to come up time and time again. And while he might have found a number of coincidental overlaps in Mendez’s history, he’d forgotten something important: any real indication of motive.
On top of that, he simply couldn’t read people yet. Laura could. And she couldn’t read what he wanted her to in this kid.
Were there any more ways the universe could point out to her that working with Eric was nothing, nothing at all, like working with Nate? She wished he was there right now. They might have argued, gone in separate directions – but he never would have made a stupid arrest like this and wasted time.
“Stay here,” she sighed, rubbing a hand across her forehead crossly. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Because, honestly, she couldn’t even see this needing to take that long.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Laura walked to the interview room – which was not exactly far away, given how small the precinct was. She’d even been able to watch the locals walking Mendez over to it, which was why she had no need to ask where he was. She walked in and sat down in front of the kid, who looked downright awful: sweating, pale, wide-eyed, and jumpy. He looked at her with huge brown eyes under a head of curly hair, like a puppy begging not to be kicked.
“Jonas Mendez,” Laura said, figuring it was best to jump right in. “Where were you yesterday evening?”
“At the skate park down by the beach,” Jonas said, right away. “With my friends. I didn’t do nothing. I swear I didn’t. I don’t know what this is all about – that crazy guy just tackled me!”
“Alright,” Laura said, holding up a soothing hand to interrupt his babbling. She took a piece of paper out of the file she’d carried in – the file of his own printed records – and turned it over to the blank space on the back. She pushed it across the table to him along with her pen. “Write down the names of your friends, so we can check up with them and confirm what times you were there.”
“It was all evening!” Jonas said. “I swear. I went there right after school, and we hung out until past midnight.”
“School?” Laura frowned. “Your record says you’re twenty-one.”
“I’m doing classes at the community college in the next town over,” Mendez explained. “I dropped out, but I went back.”
That made sense. Laura nodded. “Do you want to tell me about the fires?”
Mendez looked at his hands. He almost looked tearful. Like he was ashamed of what he was about to say. “I just…”
“Yes?” Laura prompted. She could see the kid wasn’t going to talk unless he was pushed.
“My mom had cancer,” he said, at last. “A few years ago. She didn’t make it. And I was just really… I just wanted to do something. I wanted to, like. I don’t know. Burn the world. But not really. I was just acting out. It wasn’t fair and I wanted to do something that wasn’t fair. And it was stupid, and I got in a lot of trouble, and I don’t do that anymore. But people around here don’t forget, and they still bring it up all the time.”
Laura studied him. It had come out in such a rush. All of that information at once, and it didn’t feel rehearsed or scripted to her. It felt like a kid who was scared and trying to express why he’d done something that people were never going to let him forget. Exactly what he said he was.
And he had an alibi.
“What about Saturday night?” Laura asked, just to be thorough.
“I work the night shift at the mall outside of town,” he said. “I was with the other guy on shift all night. We hung out in the security hut and played cards.”
That clinched it. All they had to do was verify both nights, and he was completely off the hook. He might have been able to find a friend to lie for him, or even one who was too high or drunk to remember him leaving but being at work all night was something else.
“Write down those names,” Laura said. “Your friends, and your coworker as well. Someone will be by in a minute to collect them all from you. Don’t lie or make something up, or you’ll be in a lot more trouble than you’ve ever been in, got it?”
Mendez nodded miserably, snatching the pen up quickly and starting to scratch out a list of names as though his life depended on it.
Laura walked out and back into the main area of the precinct, where she could see Agent Won sitting on the side of the desk, surrounded by a few officers like before. They were all grinning and talking, and she saw one of them slap him on the side of the arm as she approached. Congratulating him. They all thought the case was solved.
“Right,” she said, walking up to them and grabbing their attention quickly with the loud word. “You, I need you to go in there and take the list of names Mendez is writing down. You’re going to follow up with each of them and see what they say about where he was last night, make sure his alibi stacks up. And you, you’re going to release him.” She pointed at two of the cops at random – Mandy, she thought, and Frank, though she still wasn’t clear exactly on who was who.
“What?” Agent Won gaped, staring at her. “But he’s our suspect!”
“Did you not hear me say alibi?” Laura half-growled. “The poor kid is terrified, and he obviously has nothing to do with this case.”
Agent Won shot her a furious look. The two cops Laura had given instructions to quickly shuffled away, like they didn’t want to hang around to hear any more. The third shot an anxious look around and then scuttled to a nearby desk. A wise choice, Laura thought.
“Can I talk to you outside?” Agent Won asked stiffly, standing up from the desk and buttoning up his suit jacket.
Laura sighed and rolled her eyes, but she led him out of the precinct all the same. It was darkening outside, almost completely night, the last traces of the sun’s rays lingering just at the horizon. It was too late for this kind of thing. They had another death potentially on their hands tonight, and he wanted to act like a child. To sulk.
Laura was going to have to nip this in the bud, once and for all.
“Why did you do that?” Agent Won hissed, now that they were alone, outside in front of the precinct with the parking lot ahead of them. “Why did you have to show me up in front of them?”
“Show you up?” Laura scoffed. “This isn’t high school, and I’m not your mother. You were wrong. This kid has an alibi – and if you’d taken more than a moment to talk to him rather than sitting around congratulating yourself, you’d have known that.”
“I know it’s not high school!” Agent Won blew up, his hair falling out of its neat style as he shook his head angrily. “You undermined me in front of them! We’re supposed to be leading this investigation, and you made me look like some stupid kid!”
Laura pointed a finger towards his chest, getting closer to him than she needed to. The frustration, the anger at having to give up her plans, at having to find another body, at not solving what should have been a simpler case than this was getting under her skin. And Agent Won, who was not Nate and never would be Nate, was already right in the firing line. Getting in her face had been a mistake. Now, she was going to get in his.
“I am supposed to be leading this investigation,” Laura snapped. “You are supposed to be following my lead and doing as you’re told. You have no experience with this kind of case, you have no gut instinct, no investigative skills to speak of. You’re supposed to be learning from me, and you’re trying to take over as though you know exactly what you’re doing. Well, you don’t!”
“I have investigative skills!” Agent Won retorted, screwing his face up in anger. “I found that lead and brought him in! And I’ve been helping this whole time – you just don’t ever want to listen to me!”
“You brought in a suspect who was in a public place at the time of the last murder with a group of his friends,” Laura told him. “You want people to listen to you? That’s called respect, and you have to earn it. You shut up, you pay attention, and you listen to the people who actually know what they’re doing. You’re eager, and that’s good – but you let your head and your excitement get away from you, and that’s when you screw up!”
“So, I brought in a guy who turned out not to be the one – so what?” Agent Won said, folding his arms over his chest. “At least I’m doing something!”
“So, we just both wasted a hell of a lot of time looking in the wrong direction,” Laura told him. “So, all the local cops were just standing around talk to you and patting you on the back instead of continuing to work the case. So, our killer is out there right now probably taking his next victim – and we needed all of that time you just wasted to catch him and stop him. That’s so what!”
Agent Won blanched, shaking his head. “You can’t blame me for the killer striking again,” he said.
“Then who do I blame, Special Agent Won?” Laura asked, using his full title for effect. “We are here because the local police needed help. Because the people of this town needed help. It is our job to make sure that this killer gets caught and put away behind bars before he does any more damage. So, yes, I am going to blame you. And I am going to blame myself. Because no one else is going to solve this if we don’t – do you understand that?”
“But,” Agent Won said – but he couldn’t seem to think of anything else to follow up the word, and his voice was faltering, dropping in volume and ire.
“Stop being so overzealous about every single lead we come across, or no one’s ever going to take you seriously,” Laura snapped. “Listen to your superiors and learn a few things before you start acting like you’re God’s gift to the FBI. And for God’s sake, get off your high horse. You screwed up. Own it. And then get back to goddamn work, or you’re going to be responsible for the death of another young woman!”
Agent Won seemed to struggle for words for a moment – and then he spat one out, seemingly at random. “Whatever,” he said, like he was still a teenager, and then he pushed past Laura and stalked off back into the precinct.
Laura looked up into the sky, took a very deep breath, and counted to ten.
She rubbed her forehead, trying to calm down. This kid – he was a mess. Nowhere near ready for this kind of field work. What the hell had Chief Rondelle been thinking, assigning him with her? Was he just hoping to distract and irritate her enough that she would stop calling him about Nate? Because if so, the tactic wasn’t working. All this was doing was making her see just how good she’d had it over the past few years, to be assigned with a partner whose skill and demeanor matched hers beautifully.
There wasn’t enough time left in the day to worry about Agent Won and his little hissy fit. She had to leave him behind. He’d chosen not to stick around and hear what the next step in the investigation was, and she was done holding his hand. She had to get moving and keep going until she brought the killer down.
What she’d said hadn’t been a lie. Even right now, the killer could be out there, preparing to strike. Laura walked to the rental car in the parking lot, getting inside and firing up the GPS. It was time to go look into the local churches – and see if anyone there could shed any light on an unhealthy obsession with memorials or the use of candles for the dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Laura pulled up outside the largest church in Pacific Cove, both by actual size and by congregation, as far as her research had suggested. She ducked her head, looking through the car window for a sign of life. There was light, she thought, shining through the stained-glass windows towards the back of the building. Someone must have been in there.
Laura got out of the car, holding her breath against the blast of cold that hit her. The night had fallen in earnest now, bringing with it even lower temperatures than the day. She tried not to think about a woman laying out there somewhere on the cold ground, her life bleeding away from a hole in her neck. Because if she thought about it too hard, Laura feared she was going to give in to absolute despair. And maybe there was still time. Yes, it was dark now – but it was winter. If the killer truly wanted to wait until night instead of evening, maybe she had an hour or two, some desperate small window to get this done.
She approached the massive entrance doors of the church and pushed; to her surprise, they opened easily and without much pressure. Stepping inside, she immediately saw the source of the light she had seen from outside. Candles – dozens of them – all set up together in front of the altar on a long, low framework designed for the purpose. Memorial candles.
Laura approached them, feeling hushed as she always did in a church environment, like she needed to watch her step, in case her shoes were too loud. The rest of the church seemed empty, even though that meant the candles were unattended – strange, Laura thought, and bad practice in a town where a candle store had burned down so recently. She crossed right down the aisle between the empty pews until she was standing in front of the candles, looking into their flames.
Into flames that seemed so familiar. A pattern that seemed engraved in her memory.
And now she knew. The flames – these were the same ones she had seen in her vision. The candles, too, were the same kind that were placed with the bodies. A few different kinds, which explained something about why those on the bodies had shown slight differentiations in size and thickness. To one side, Laura spotted a long, thin device with a kind of cup on one end: an old-fashioned candle snuffer. If one were to place it down on top of these flames…
Just like that, they would go out, leaving behind only smoke.
“Can I help you?”
Laura jumped at the voice, spinning around to face the source of it, her heart pounding in her chest. Her hand even flew towards her gun, though she didn’t draw it. She stopped herself when she saw him coming towards her out of the vestry, his black clothing and white collar a clear indication of his occupation.
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