No Chance, page 2
“Hey! This is private land! Beat it!” she shouted as she walked, making a point of showing the knife in her hand.
Again, the thing in the tractor didn’t respond.
A cold sweat washed over Gina as she neared, and the sun now began to truly illuminate the world around her. The hills revealed themselves to be tinged with the yellowed melancholy of fall into winter.
The isolation of the farm was now in Gina’s blood. She wanted to run, to get far away from the thing sitting in her tractor, but her stubbornness wouldn’t let her.
She had to do something about it herself, otherwise whoever it was would come back again and again.
“Hey! Last warning!”
Gina reached the tractor and looked through the mud-stained Perspex. The person inside was obscured by it, blurred around the edges. But Gina could now at least see that it was a woman.
Her hand trembling, Gina pulled the door of the tractor open, gripping the knife in her other hand.
“Get out of there!” she yelled as the door opened.
There was no movement. Instead, the woman inside sat in the driver's chair. She was looking out at the world, her face pale white. Blood seeped out from the floor under the operator’s seat, thick and half congealed.
Gina stepped backwards and put her hands to her mouth. She did not scream. She couldn’t. She was too afraid.
A woman had been murdered on her farm. Her wrists were strapped to the wheel of the tractor. Two hand scythes, which Gina instantly recognized as her own, were buried deep in the woman’s chest.
Something then moved nearby from behind a bush. And Gina found herself running. Running for her life. Terrified that the farmstead she had spent all her life savings on would now drain more than her finances.
She now feared that the farm would drain her of life too.
CHAPTER ONE
Valerie could hear the slow hum of the Mesmer building all around her. It was late, but although she knew it was a cliche, it remained true: The FBI never slept.
In far off corridors, hallways, departments, and case rooms, agents were carrying out investigations, tracking down fugitives, and seeking out those the Federal government had to stop.
But as Valerie looked down at the case file on her desk, fingering through the photographs and twenty-eight-year-old notes, she knew she was blurring the lines of professional investigation.
This case was personal.
Up until recently, Valerie had been certain that a man named Nathan Law was her father. Even though he had run out on her and her family when she was only a child, she had still felt the security of knowing he was somewhere out there, alive and still her dad. She knew who she was. At the very least, she knew where she came from.
That security was now gone.
After finally tracking Nathan down, a simple DNA test had revealed a horrible truth: He was not her biological father. There was worse to come. It was a rabbit hole with meandering twists and turns, and at each blind corner, something more devastating than the last was revealed.
Valerie rubbed her tired eyes before glaring back down at the files on her desk. The papers were strewn across the wooden surface and the photographs showed the body of a man with his throat cut. DNA testing had shown that the man, Jake Wilson, was Valerie's biological father. He had been murdered nearly three decades earlier.
She had no memory of ever meeting him, and so he must have been out of her life at an early age before Nathan Law had appeared to take up his role in the demolition derby that was her childhood history. All her life she had thought she knew her dad, but now the ugly truth had been revealed. And it meant that everyone had lied to her: her mother, Nathan, everyone.
Looking at the photos, Valerie tried to hold the bitterness of it all inside. She thought, who are you, Jake Wilson? Who were you? Why did I never meet you?
And then the worst question of all: Who killed you?
"I need to find your killer, Dad," she whispered.
Almost instinctively, she turned to the large, empty room around her, as if expecting someone to be eavesdropping. Her partners at the Criminal Psychopathy Unit were nowhere to be seen. The room should have been buzzing with activity as she and her colleagues chased down a new lead. But her boss, Jackson Weller, had been put on administrative leave pending investigation, and the team hadn't been handed a new case for a month.
One of the higher ups, a man by the name of Heinlein, had it in for Jackson. He was doing everything he could to shut them down. Valerie felt partly to blame. Heinlein was using the fact that she'd been given access to an old case, the Claw Stitch Killer, as evidence of Jackson's poor leadership. A case during which she had long ago made a critical mistake while investigating.
Valerie shook the thought from her head. There was too much buzzing inside of it from her career and personal life. She couldn't even turn to her fiancé, Tom. He was spending time with his parents and increasingly distant from her.
So, she had to focus on one thing at a time. With no case, no fiancé near, and no team at her back currently, she was going to put all her energy into finding out what happened to her father.
Valerie gazed at the photos again and then returned to the detective notes in her dad's unsolved murder case. A handwritten note stood out to her.
Robert Freeman, a friend of Jake Wilson's.
Underneath this was a record of three different interviews with him at a police station. Valerie knew that it was unlikely this had happened by chance. If the police pulled him in three times, it was because they thought he knew something.
Freeman's details were attached to the sheet of paper, and Valerie quickly entered them into her computer. The FBI database showed that he was currently incarcerated for assault.
It was late. The drive to the prison where he was being held was two hours away.
But Valerie knew she wouldn't be able to sleep with this information running around her head. She had to go and question the man and figure out for herself if Robert Freeman was her father's murderer.
CHAPTER TWO
Valerie had sat staring through the glass of the visitor room at Warmarsh Prison for thirty-three minutes. She knew the exact amount of time because she kept glancing nervously at her watch.
The cold metal and fluorescent lighting of the place didn't faze her. She'd been to a hundred of such places before in her career, chasing down leads, often from prisoners who had some insider knowledge about a fugitive or murder suspect.
This time was different. This time, she was waiting to meet Robert Freeman and discuss her biological father's murder with him.
Valerie kept glancing between her watch and the phone handset attached to the window in front of her. Soon, she would have some answers. But she wondered if there would be more questions too.
A door opened on the other side of the glass. Valerie swallowed slightly, steadying her nerves as best as she could. She then saw a large man being escorted into the room by a prison guard. He was tall and broad, with dark hair graying at the temples. He had a thick beard that covered most of his face.
He sat down on the other side of the window, glared intently through the glass, and then picked up the phone on his side.
In turn, Valerie picked up the phone handset on hers to begin their conversation.
A gruff voice spoke on the other end, "what's the FBI want with me?"
"We're investigating a cold case," she said. This wasn't strictly a lie or a truth. She hadn't been assigned her father's case, but she was investigating it. "You're Robert Freeman?"
"That's me."
Valerie looked at the man on the other side of the glass. He was large and, even in his fifties, he could have throttled the life from most with his wide, powerful hands. Valerie had studied his own files back at Quantico. Robert Freeman had a long criminal record, mostly for assault and battery. But he'd also done time for armed robbery and drug trafficking.
She knew from her research that he'd been out of prison for less than a year when her father was murdered. And he'd been living in the same city as Jake Wilson at the time.
"I'm here to talk to you about an unsolved murder case," Valerie said into the phone. "Jake Wilson."
Freeman's eyes narrowed at the mention of the name. "Not this again ... what about him?" he asked gruffly.
"He was killed twenty years ago," Valerie replied. "You were interviewed by police in connection with his murder. Three times, in fact."
Freeman shifted uncomfortably in his seat and stared at Valerie through the glass. She could see the wheels turning in his head.
"Yeah, so?" he finally answered.
"In the file, the police report states that you had been going drinking with Jake Wilson the night he was killed?"
"Circumstantial," he grinned. "That's why the pigs couldn't put anything on me. Not then, not now."
Valerie's stomach turned. She wondered if she was staring through the glass at her father's murderer. Staring at a face that grinned back at her with menace.
She knew she had to keep her cool, no matter how much she wanted to reach through the glass and wipe that grin off of his face.
"I was never charged with anything," Freeman continued. "I got my alibi from three different people who were at the bar that night. I stayed; Jake left. Then he was taken and killed."
"If you didn't kill him, then who did?"
Freeman laughed. "Who knows? Some gang in the neighborhood, maybe. Or maybe he just pissed off the wrong person and got what was coming to him."
As Valerie gazed at Freeman, she felt her heart sinking. This man seemed totally unrepentant for his past crimes, and he showed no signs of remorse or guilt for Jake's death. That meant he was either a psychopath, or he genuinely had nothing to do with his death.
Valerie needed to turn the screw. "Why were you drinking with Jake if you didn't much care for him?" she asked.
That sparked something in Robert. He shook his head angrily. "Did I say I didn't like the guy?"
"So, you did like him?"
"Sure," Robert said. "He was a nice enough guy as far as petty thieves go. But we weren't all that close. And I got tired of the cops trying to pin it on me. We drank together, we talked a bit about our past exploits, and that was it."
"What did you talk to him about?" Valerie asked.
"Bar talk," Robert replied. "I didn't know much about him. I knew he had two young girls, if I remember right. That was it. And the reason I remember that is because he was upset one night because he hadn't seen them in a while. It's not usual to see his type get that soft. When you see a grown man cry, it sticks with you. Especially in our circles."
That stung. The idea that her father felt remorse for leaving hung in her mind. Valerie wondered why he left. But she felt doubt that she'd ever know. The only person who knew was her mom, and she was still in a secure psychiatric hospital and was barely cogent most of the time.
She didn't even know if her mom would tell her the truth anyway. Whether it was her illness or not, her mother was draped in lies and secrecy. She always had been.
"Hey, you with me?" Robert said.
Valerie suddenly realized that she had been in a daze, mulling over the past. This had been happening at an alarming rate lately, and combined with strange hallucinations, she knew it was only a matter of time before the same psychiatric illness that ruined her mother and sister's lives would ruin hers.
"Yes," she said, clearing her throat and shuffling uncomfortably in her seat. "What was the last thing Jake Wilson said to you?"
But Freeman wasn't listening. He was considering Valerie. She knew why. He had spotted the weird zoning out.
Then he cracked a smile. "Oh, wait a minute," he said, laughing. "This isn't a professional call, is it? You're connected to Jake."
Valerie's blood ran cold. She was losing the interview.
"Please just answer my questions," she said.
Robert Freeman leaned back in his chair. "So, are you working for the family? Are they digging up all this and want to figure out if I did it or something?"
"Something like that," Valerie found herself saying.
There was a silence between them. Valerie had spent her career profiling criminals, but now, she felt the intense scrutiny of Robert Freeman's gaze. She knew he had seen something. A tell she did not even know she had.
He laughed even louder than before.
"Don't tell me ... you're his daughter?"
Valerie said nothing.
Freeman drew closer to the glass and looked into her eyes. "You are as well. I see it now. The same stubbornness. Well God damn."
"Just answer my questions," Valerie said, her words trembling slightly in her mouth.
"I don't know what you want me to say."
"Did you kill him?" Valerie asked, doing her best to choke back the emotion.
Freeman looked at her for what felt like forever. And then he shook his head. Then Valerie thought she saw a twinge of emotion in him. Perhaps even some regret. He had, whether he had meant to or not, pulled back his mask a little.
"No," he said, finally. "I didn't kill your dad. I've done some bad stuff in my time, but I've never taken a life. A few fingers, sure. But not that."
Valerie didn't know whether to believe him or not. Judging by his records, Robert Freeman would be due for parole in four years. If he was guilty, he wouldn't want to admit to murder and face countless more years in prison.
"If you really want to know about your dad," he continued. "I'd ask your mother."
"Why?" Valerie feared the answer.
"Because," he said leaning back in his chair, "your dad was heading to see her when he left the bar that night. The official account is he never made it. But I know the breakup between your parents was bad. I'm not wanting to say that your mom is guilty ... but, well, it's worth chewing over." He stood up and gestured to the guard that he was ready to leave.
"I haven't finished my questions!" Valerie said loudly.
"You're an FBI agent all right," he said. "But you're not here on official business. If you ever have the means to get me out of here quickly, be sure to come back and ask some more questions about your daddy."
Robert Freeman turned to exit the room, but he stopped for a moment, grabbed the phone one last time, and said, "for what it's worth, Jake meant well. I liked him. He didn't deserve what happened." Robert hung up and then exited the room.
Valerie sat there for a moment, stunned. She was left alone, her mind spinning. Could her mother really have killed her father? It was too awful to contemplate.
A deep need for support bubbled up inside of her. She needed to call Tom and just hear his voice. But when she dialed his number on her cell phone, the number rang out and went to his answering message.
She just hoped he wasn't ignoring her. Not after everything they'd been through together.
Suddenly, the phone in her hand sprung into life. She didn't look at the ID and answered it enthusiastically, but it wasn't Tom's voice on the other end of the line. It was an unexpected call.
"Agent Law?" a reserved, serious voice asked.
"Yes?" Valerie answered.
"My name is Director Arthur Heinlein"
Valerie's heart sank. She knew who he was immediately. He was the director at the Bureau who had spear headed the investigation into her apartment. He was the reason her boss, Jackson Weller, had been put on administrative leave.
"Hello, Director Heinlein," Valerie said, trying not to sound resentful. "How can I help you?"
"Against my recommendations, the Criminal Psychopathy Unit has been given further resources to continue its work."
"So, you do want to shut us down?"
"I see no reason for your unit," Heinlein said grimly. "I only see it as a vanity project of Jackson Weller's."
Valerie wasn't going to take that sitting down. "Our and Jackson's work speaks for itself. We've taken several of the most dangerous killers in America off the streets and saved who knows how many lives."
"You're arrogant, Agent Law," Heinlein said. "But there's no doubt you are talented. For now, I am going to oversee the unit until the investigation into Jackson Weller's running of it has concluded."
"And then what?" Valerie asked.
"That depends on the investigation," Heinlein answered. "If it's proven that Jackson Weller has mishandled things, then the unit will either be dismantled or someone else will be given oversight. But that can wait for now."
"You won't find a better department head than Jackson Weller," Valerie stated confidently.
"We'll see," said Heinlein. "But for now, I have a case for you, Agent Law. A series of murders has been happening in Kansas."
"Kansas?" Valerie said. Like many, her first thought was The Wizard of Oz; a thought of scenic farmsteads and country charm. Her mind was not thrust immediately into visions of murder and death. But that was where it would be heading. She knew this. Her life always traipsed into those dangerous territories.
"Yes, Kansas," Heinlein said, unimpressed. "We've had three murders so far, and it doesn't look like the killer is going to stop any time soon. But I have one question for you, Agent Law."
"And that would be?"
"Are you up to it?" Heinlein asked. "Because if you're not comfortable working under me, I can have you reassigned to some other unit."
"I'm not going to put office politics before the lives of innocent people, Director Heinlein. I'm in."
"Good," he answered. "I'll give you two days to show your worth."
"Two days!?" Valerie repeated, shocked. "And what if we don't make a breakthrough in that time?"
"I'll call you and your team back, and it'll be another example of Jackson Weller's failures. Are we clear?"
Valerie could almost hear his smirk over the phone. She was angry. Angry for Jackson, but most of all angry that a director at the Bureau would play politics with lives in the balance.
She knew the best way to prove her worth and get Jackson out of trouble was to show that his unit was the best in the country for tracking down serial killers.
"Okay, I'm in," she said.
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