Already Dead, page 8
A deep frown came across Justin’s forehead. “This is the first I’m hearing about this,” he said. “Toby didn’t declare any criminal record on his application.”
“You didn’t do a background check?” Laura asked.
“Well,” Justin said. A look of slight panic was coming over his face. “I mean, I’m not the only person responsible for hiring, and…”
“Never mind,” Laura snapped, cutting him off. “You can reassess your company policies later. Where is he? Is he on shift now?”
“Uh,” Justin said, glancing towards the factory floor again. “I think his shift just ended. He would have just punched out.”
Laura swore. “Come with us, right now!”
She rushed out into the reception area again with Agent Won at her side and Justin only just behind them. She ushered Justin ahead, directing him towards the punch clock she had glimpsed inside the locker room. It was a newer electronic system and, beside it, all the timecards were set up along the wall.
Justin moved with dexterity to the right card, grabbing it out and reading the printed numbers on it. He checked his watch right afterwards. “Seven sixteen,” he read. “This was less than two minutes ago. He’s probably still in the parking lot!”
That was all Laura needed to hear.
“Car make and model?” she shouted over her shoulder, already springing towards the door.
“I don’t know exactly – it’s a brown truck with a dented bumper,” Justin called back, his voice disappearing as she built up to full speed through the reception area and out into the lot.
There were still plenty of cars out there. Still people moving towards them and driving away, although the influx of arriving employees had stopped. The lateness of the leaving shift meant that many of the spots closer to the door were now empty, with the new arrivals not having been able to park in them. There was a brown truck, right up ahead of them, towards the back of the empty area – like he’d been one of the last to arrive for the last shift.
And there was a man walking right up to the door with his keys held out in his hand.
“Hey!” Laura yelled, still rushing towards him. “Toby Martins!”
He glanced at her, confirming her suspicions that he was indeed the man they were after. He was balding, probably in his fifties, a little overweight. A little greasy. His face was round and white in the gathering gloom, catching the streetlights above the lot. He stared at her for a split second, and in that moment, she saw two things: one, that he understood well enough they were law enforcement, and two, he wasn’t going to hang around to see what they wanted.
He cleared the last of the distance to his truck, unlocked it, and jumped into the driver’s seat without bothering with a seatbelt.
He was going to try to get away.
Laura gritted her teeth and put on another burst of speed, but she could already see that it was too late. “Stop! FBI!” she shouted, even though she knew realistically that that almost never worked. Actually, it seemed like people were more likely to run from her whenever she told them who she was. But then that was probably because she had a knack for yelling it at people who were actually guilty.
The engine of the truck started. Laura knew this wasn’t going to work. She wasn’t some kind of athlete, even if she kept in shape enough for the average chase. She wasn’t going to be able to chase down a truck. She peeled off to the side, making for where they had parked their rental car, expecting Agent Won to follow.
When she glanced over her shoulder a moment later, he was still heading right for the truck.
Laura swore in her head again, with no breath to actually utter it out loud. She reached the car and fumbled for the door, wrenching it open and throwing herself inside. The truck was squealing out of the parking lot already, and a glance in her rearview mirror as she started the engine and threw the car into reverse showed her Agent Won just narrowly avoiding getting hit by it.
Laura had no time even to shake her head – she had to go. She roared backwards, throwing the car back into drive to speed after him, taking the shortest possible route to the parking lot exit instead of following in the burned rubber he’d already laid down. Agent Won appeared to be trying to give chase on foot, so she ignored him. She had to. There was no time to stop and let him get into the car. He’d already made his choice.
Laura made it to the exit only a few moments after the truck did, but he was moving fast on the road already, putting his foot all the way down and disregarding any street signs or limits. Laura turned onto the road after him and put her own foot to the floor, gripping the steering wheel tightly. She couldn’t be afraid to go fast now. She was going to have to catch him, and that meant keeping up with the turns he took, staying on his tail for as long as she had to before he was in cuffs.
Past the parking lot and the factory, they quickly descended into a less populated area. It was only a small town, after all, and the factory was on the outskirts – no doubt planned that way to avoid an eyesore that might put off the tourists. The streetlights petered out, plunging Laura into darkness with only her own headlights and those of the truck to show her the way. She focused on keeping him ahead, taking turn after turn just as he did, not letting him pull away from her.
It was tight. He didn’t bother with normal road safety, turning at the last minute every time, forcing her to also wrench the steering wheel hard and shoot after him down increasingly small rural roads, out away from the town now. She had no idea where she was. In the darkness, things loomed up out of nowhere – fence posts alongside the road, large boulders probably set there as markers, hedges, a barrier that told her they were most likely back alongside the sea. She glanced at her GPS to confirm it, and –
He was gone. Where had he gone?!
Laura glanced around in a panic, looking for the telltale sign of headlights, but she could see none. She checked all of her mirrors, slowing down, looking through her windows desperately. Nothing. He must have taken a quick turn and she’d lost him while she was looking away, concentrating on the screen.
Laura swore vehemently for what felt like the fifteenth time and grabbed for her phone, feeling a shot of pain right across her head even before she’d managed to fully rationalize that she needed to call Waters and get an APB –
Flashing lights. Blinking from one side to the other of a sign. A warning. Laura’s vision expanded from that one spot of darkness, and she saw more: the barriers down over the crossing, stopping anyone from just driving on through. Tracks. Railroad tracks. There was a train coming.
And there was a brown truck parked in front of the flashing lights.
Laura blinked, realizing she was looking at her phone again. She braked hard, checking the GPS: there was a railroad track across the left side of the map, opposite to the direction of the water, and she’d just passed a turning that appeared to go all the way towards it.
She hit reverse again, zooming back to the trail – little more than a bumpy passage between two fields, with high hedges on both sides obscuring her sight and almost making the turnoff invisible – and took it, powering ahead once more.
There was still no time to lose. The train would go through the crossing; the barriers would open. She had to get to him before that, and she still couldn’t see –
She took a slight bend in the track, and up ahead she saw them. Blinking lights. The crossing.
Laura gunned it until she was right on the truck, seeing the driver’s side door open in the beam of her headlights. He knew she was on him. He stumbled out and almost fell, dragging himself back to his feet and trying to run, trying to make it across the field. But he was overweight, unfit. Laura was quicker.
She leapt out of her car, drawing her gun the moment she hit the ground and pointing it at his shambling figure. “Freeze, or I’ll shoot!” she warned, grabbing her torch with the other hand in case he didn’t stop, in case she needed to chase him across the dark fields.
He stopped.
He turned, bringing his hands up above his head, looking at her with an expression she’d seen many times. The fear, regret, and panic of being caught and knowing there was no longer any way out.
She had him now.
She pulled her handcuffs out of her belt, stepping towards him with the gun still held steady just in case he got any more ideas. This time, when she reached for her cell phone, it was going to be to call it in – and get Agent Won to prepare at the precinct to bring Martins in.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Laura stared through the window of the interview room, watching Toby Martins. The man was sitting there stony-faced and silent, his arms clasped in front of him where the cuffs didn’t allow him to fold them over his chest, staring into nothing. He couldn’t see Laura through the double-sided glass.
“What are we waiting for?” Agent Won asked. He had been tapping his finger on the table beside the window for at least five minutes, as if Laura didn’t know already that he was feeling impatient.
“I told you,” she said. “There’s no point barging in there and trying to get him to talk all over again. We have to play this carefully and trick him into talking.”
“Why can’t we just do that now?” Agent Won complained. “I learned this technique in the Academy, where you -”
“Trust me, Agent Won,” Laura said through gritted teeth. “They haven’t invented any new techniques since I was at the Academy myself. Whatever they taught you, I know it too.”
Agent Won slumped a little, then dropped down into the seat by the window. There was only the basics of investigation at the little precinct: a single interview room, with a single control room beside it, where another officer could watch through the window and monitor the recording equipment. It was a little cramped, to say the least.
Laura stayed standing, watching Martins. He hadn’t shown much sign of discomfort since they’d brought him in. It was as though none of this was touching him – but through observation, Laura was starting to notice small signs that that wasn’t quite the case. When he did reach for the plastic cup of water they’d provided for him – which was not often – his hands were shaking slightly. He took quick, sharp sips, as if afraid to show any vulnerability in his thirst.
“When are we going to go back in there?” Agent Won asked. “If we’re waiting, then fine. But when do we stop?”
Laura sighed, turning to face him. When I say so was the tempting answer that wanted to roll off her tongue. But even though she didn’t much feel like being anyone’s mentor, she could at least explain to Won what she was doing and why. Then he would stop asking her every five minutes, and she could get some peace, at least for the day.
She didn’t want to think about the fact that they might remain partnered up for longer, but if they did, she definitely wanted him on the same page as her with this kind of thing.
“What’s the one thing he’s said over and over again since we brought him in?” Laura asked.
“No comment,” Agent Won readily supplied.
“When we asked him why he ran?”
“No comment.”
“When we asked him if he wanted a lawyer?”
“No comment.”
“When we asked him to confirm his own name?”
“No comment.”
“Right.” Laura looked at Agent Won evenly. “If you go back in there and try to talk to him again without changing anything, what do you think he’s going to say?”
Agent Won looked annoyed to have to say it, but he did: “No comment.”
“That’s not going to get us anywhere,” Laura said, turning back to the window. “I’m not just standing here staring at him, you know. I’m watching. Assessing his mental state.”
“What are you looking for?” Agent Won asked.
“Signs that he’s beginning to crumble,” Laura said. “Look at him right now. He’s solid, at least on the outside. On the inside, all kinds of things are going through his head. He’s wondering if we have any evidence. Trying to tell himself that we don’t. Wondering how long he’s been here, how long we’re going to keep him. Maybe thinking about getting home, the things he was supposed to be doing tonight. Making dinner. And then he’ll go back around – how long am I going to be here for? And all these worries are going to circle around and around in his head until it starts to break him, because there’s nothing there to distract him from them.”
“What if it doesn’t?” Agent Won asked.
“It will,” Laura said. She nodded to the window again just as Martins reached out for another jerky, quick sip of his drink. “Look. He’s already so nervous he’s practically afraid to move. And if it doesn’t, well, there’s always the backup plan.”
“What’s the backup plan?”
Laura almost smiled at how easily Agent Won fell into her ‘trap’ and asked the right question. “The locals,” she said. “We asked Detective Waters to go and raid his place, right? The warrant came through, and they’ll be there by now. All we have to do is wait. If there’s something of evidential value there, we’ll have it soon enough. And we can take that into the room to batter down his defenses instead.”
“What if that doesn’t work?” Agent Won asked.
“Then we try another technique,” Laura said. “But believe me, of all the things you learned in your training, the most important is this: people like to fill silences. Right now, he’s filling that silence with a dialogue inside his own head, trying to convince himself to stay calm but getting worse and worse at doing so. And once we go in there, he’ll already be so nervous that when we leave more silences in the conversation, he’ll fill them with stupid things. Things he shouldn’t say. That’s how we’ll get him.”
Agent Won said nothing to that, apparently contemplating it in the privacy of his own mind. Laura resumed her own silent vigil, concentrating on Martins. Of course, there were two edges to every sword, and she was doing a pretty good job of filling her own silence with her own thoughts.
Like the statistics that were bugging her: that most killers who took more than one victim in a ritualistic or specific manner like this tended to be on the younger side, before the age of thirty. But Toby Martins was in his fifties. There was also the fact that he didn’t look very fit or healthy, yet the person they were looking for had carried the body of an adult and laid it down and then gotten away quickly enough that no one saw them do it.
None of which meant he couldn’t be the killer at all. There were always exceptions to the rule, and maybe he was just stronger than he looked. Laura didn’t have any connection between him and the victims yet, either, but then again, he hadn’t given them any information at all. It might all still come together.
So why did she have the nagging feeling that it wasn’t going to?
Toby Martins reached out for his cup of water again, whip-fast, and only succeeded in knocking it over. It spilled immediately, the rest of the water pooling on the table and dripping to the floor as the cup spun away. He went white in the face at the moment it happened, visibly swallowing, then again – his throat was clearly so dry he needed to do it twice.
Laura smiled to herself.
“Alright,” she said. “You go and get another cup of water. Join me in a couple of seconds.” She paused to pull a few tissues from a box that was sitting on the table beside the recording equipment and walked briskly into the interview room. She trusted that Agent Won would at least do as he was told without any problems, putting her game face back on as she returned to Toby Martins’s direct line of view.
“Having a clumsy moment, Mr. Martins?” she said, as cheerfully as if she were a nurse doing the rounds with elderly patients. She stooped to pick up the cup, making sure to underline the fact that she was able to reach and move to get it while he was not, and then dumped the tissues on top of the water on the table. “Never mind. You can mop it up; there you go.”
It was a power move in two directions: first, to make him clean up his own mess instead of doing it for him, and second, to remind him that he was being watched at all times. He didn’t have any privacy here. That should help to keep him on edge, to increase his feelings of powerlessness and make him second guess everything.
All of which was going to help immensely with getting him to talk, even if he knew he shouldn’t.
Laura sat in the chair opposite him and leaned back, crossing her arms over her chest – the way he clearly wanted to, but couldn’t. She’d seen him try when they’d first left him in the room, finding the handcuffs too restrictive.
And then she simply looked at him while he reluctantly mopped up the spill, stopping it from spreading over the edge of the table and falling on his own legs, and heaped up the sopping wet tissues in a pile when he was done. Then he finally looked back at her, and glanced away, clearly uncomfortable.
Laura let the silence go on. The longer, the better, after all. She wasn’t in any rush herself. Not while she still had the suspect right in front of her. If he was the one who had been doing this, then there was no way he could take another victim from here.
Of course, there was still that doubt in the back of her mind. But she shut it down. The point of the exercise was to make him lose control – not to freak herself out instead.
“How long are you going to keep me here?” he said, at last. That was a victory in itself. He’d been the first one to blink.
“It doesn’t have to be much longer at all, Mr. Martins,” Laura said. “All you have to do is answer our questions. Why did you run from us at the factory?”
Martins grunted. “Because I don’t like pigs.”
Laura allowed a small smile to quirk the corner of her mouth, to show him that she was more amused than insulted by his choice of epithet. “That might be a reason to avoid us. But you didn’t just calmly avoid us, did you? You ran. You drove dangerously. It seemed like you were pretty desperate to get away from us.”
“No comment,” he said, apparently remembering that he was supposed to be sticking to the same technique.
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