Blood Reckoning

by C. M. Sutter

  I just need to get beyond the next set of lights, and then I’ll cross the street and cut back. Renz has to pick up his pace so we reach the guy at the same time.

  I waited at the next set of lights for the crosswalk character to light up and count down the seconds as I crossed. I made a right on the sidewalk and walked toward the man. He was a half block away and heading toward me. Renz needed to speed up. The guy would reach me, pass me, and we would be back in the same boat as before. I stopped and acted like I was window shopping. That would slow down my point of contact with the man while Renz caught up.

  It was time to act. The kid was only thirty feet from me, and Renz was twenty feet behind him. I would be the one to make contact with him since, as a woman, I didn’t come across as threatening. I stepped away from the store window and into the center of the sidewalk. There was no doubt that the young man matched Ray’s description right down to the black combat boots.

  “Excuse me. I’m wondering if you can point me in the direction of the army surplus store. I know it’s around here somewhere.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know.”

  He tried to get around me, but I stepped in front of him just as Renz reached his back. We both pulled out our FBI ID’s and stuck them in his face.

  “We need a word with you,” Renz said, “but if you make a scene or try to run, we’ll have no choice but to arrest you.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Now it’s illegal to walk down the sidewalk? I want an attorney.”

  I chuckled. “For what? You aren’t under arrest yet. Now let’s go back to our car and have a talk.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.” He jerked out of my grip, but Renz was there to grab him.

  “Trying to flee from an FBI agent is grounds for arrest. Turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

  The kid yelled out to get attention. It was obvious from his behavior that he knew exactly what to do. Cell phones came out within seconds, and people followed us as we walked several blocks to the car with a yelling, flailing young man. I rolled my eyes at his foolishness. All he had to do was cooperate, but instead, he felt the need to make a scene and have a tantrum.

  We finally made it to the cruiser, where a unit was waiting. I had already called for a police transport to meet us since our car wasn’t equipped with a cage or back doors that he couldn’t escape from. Transporting the kid in a secured vehicle and talking to him at the police station was safer for everyone, and we needed the interview recorded anyway.

  We followed the squad car back to the downtown precinct, only six blocks away, where we were shown to the interview room where the officer had taken the kid. At that point, we hadn’t even learned his name. Renz held open the door as I entered then closed it at his back. We both took seats across from our detainee.

  “Now, do you want to cooperate or spend the night in jail because you wouldn’t answer a few simple questions?”

  “You wouldn’t tell me why you wanted to question me,” he sneered.

  “Maybe if you’d given us a minute of your time, you would have found that out,” I said. “We need to see your ID.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we want to know who we’re talking to.” I reached across the table. “ID or a jail cell, your choice.” He lifted his hip, pulled out his wallet, and slid it across the table. I pushed it back. “Remove your ID from the plastic sleeve and pass it here.”

  He cursed but complied. “When are you going to read me my rights?”

  Renz took his turn. “Like Agent Monroe said before, you aren’t read your rights unless you’re under arrest, and we haven’t arrested you yet. If you really want your rights read to you—well, you know what comes next.” Renz cocked his head. “Your call”—he looked at the ID—“Brandon Dalton.”

  “Just tell me what you want so I can go about my day.”

  “Yeah, we could have done that a half hour ago on the sidewalk, but you chose to be belligerent instead.” Renz leaned back in the chair. “I’m feeling like a snack right now. How about you, Agent Monroe?”

  “Sounds like a great idea. We’ll be back soon, Brandon, so just relax and enjoy yourself.” I turned and stuck out my hand. “Cell phone.”

  He gave me the finger before sliding his phone across the table. “You people suck.”

  “Thanks.” I grinned. “Go ahead and stew for a while. We’ll be back when we feel like it.”

  Renz and I walked out and into the next room, where we watched through the one-way glass and listened to him curse for a few minutes.

  “Feel like a soda and chips?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Okay, I’ll go find a vending machine.”

  I tipped my wrist when Renz walked out—5:17. A bag of chips would have to do until later. I didn’t see myself heading home until eight o’clock at best.

  Five minutes later, the sound of a shoe tapping against the door told me Renz was back. I assumed he couldn’t open it with two sodas and snacks. I got up and pulled the door inward.

  “Thanks.”

  “You bet.” I took one of the sodas and a bag of chips and sat down.

  “He saying much to himself?”

  “Nah, not really. Mostly cussing us out. Seems like an entitled punk to me, but let’s see what the police officer can pull from the database. Maybe he has a record, and maybe he doesn’t.”

  Renz took a seat next to me. “Ray wasn’t too far off on the kid’s description. Twenty and well built, just like he said.”

  “And the clothes are a perfect match.”

  We sat back, enjoyed our sodas and chips, and watched Brandon until it looked like he was bored enough to talk. I doubted that he wanted to sit there all night.

  I stretched then stood up. “Ready?”

  “Yep. The funny thing is the kid doesn’t even know what we want to talk to him about, yet he put up a fight anyway.”

  I shook my head. “You know what that means, right?”

  “Sure do. He’s already guilty of something.”

  We were about to leave when the officer walked in with a sheet of paper in hand.

  “Uh-oh,” Renz said.

  “Yep, he has a police jacket, and believe it or not, his offenses began at age fourteen. All of his juvenile crimes were dismissed with fines and community service, but when he reached eighteen, and then again at twenty, he was charged with battery and served three months and then six months in jail.”

  “What were the cases?” I asked.

  The officer read from the page. “The first offense was for beating his girlfriend and putting her in the hospital. It looks like she refused to press charges, so the parents did. Apparently, the daughter was a minor. Brandon served three months at the Waukesha County jail and three hundred hours of community service for that one.”

  Renz tipped his head. “And the second offense?”

  The officer frowned. “This guy must have real anger issues. Looks like an unprovoked attack on an elderly woman who was walking her dog. Broke the woman’s glasses, two ribs, and she had stitches in her head. Looks like the attack was caught on a store camera, but it took a month to track him down. Meanwhile, the woman moved to Nebraska to live with her daughter.”

  “Wow, a real Boy Scout,” I said.

  We thanked the officer. He left the sheet with us and walked out.

  I stepped into the hallway. “Let’s see what Brandon has to say for himself about this afternoon.”

  Chapter 10

  We returned to the interview room where Brandon sat. He looked up as we entered, gave us his best glare, then huffed.

  “It’s about damn time. You think I have all night to sit in this hellhole?”

  I took a seat. “You have somewhere more exciting to be? Say back at the overpass where you were earlier today?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  It was time to pull out our “white lie to get the ball rolling” card. Because of Ray’s statement
, we knew Brandon was there, but we hadn’t actually seen him on camera footage yet.

  “We saw you on the bank’s outdoor camera system that happens to face the freeway’s over- and underpass. We had a clear view of you standing between the tent city and the alley off to the west. You seemed to be looking around for something maybe? After that, you entered the alley, were in there for a few minutes, and then came back out. You headed south and then disappeared from the camera view after turning right onto a side street.”

  “Wow, you have me all figured out. First, it’s illegal to walk down the sidewalk, and then I find out it’s also illegal to walk anywhere in the city.”

  “So you admit you were there? It’d be tough to refute surveillance footage that shows everything about you right down to those combat boots you’re wearing.”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  Renz took over. “Why were you there? I wouldn’t consider a tent city where drug- and alcohol-addicted homeless people live as being on anyone’s bucket list of places to visit.”

  “I wasn’t hanging out there. I was cutting through.”

  I smiled. “See, that doesn’t jibe. If you were cutting through from who knows where, you would have kept going, but you didn’t. You wandered around, went into the alley, came back out, and left the way you came. Then an hour and a half later, we find you roaming the sidewalk on an entirely different street in a different direction than where you came from.”

  Renz played the stare-down game with Brandon. “Where did you come from, and how did you get downtown?”

  “I took the city bus. Is that a crime too?”

  “Nope, not at all, but you still haven’t answered our question.”

  “Yeah, with all your yammering, I forgot what the question was.”

  “Why were you at the tent city?”

  “I wanted to see what a homeless camp looked like. Big deal.”

  “You mean you wanted to see what a homeless camp looked like during the daylight hours? Did you drop something there the night before, or thought you did, and went back to have a look?”

  “Huh?” He laughed. “You people make no sense.”

  It was my turn to laugh, and I would be sure to watch his expression closely. “It seems that the same camera caught a crime being committed the night before—say around two a.m. give or take a few minutes.”

  “Sorry, I can’t help you. If I recall, there wasn’t much of a moon last night. It had to be darker than hell under that overpass.”

  “We didn’t say the crime was committed under the overpass.” Bingo, I had him. Brandon’s face went five shades whiter in an instant. “Something wrong, Brandon? It looks like you’re about to puke.”

  He regained his composure, and I assumed he’d been in an interrogation room numerous times before. He was versed in the correct thing to say under pressure. “Show me proof that I was there the night before. Either arrest me—which I’m sure you won’t since I’ve committed no crime—or I’m walking out.”

  There wasn’t anything we could do other than putting him there earlier in the day—and being there earlier in the day wasn’t a crime. We had to cut him loose. Forensics needed to process the scene, print everything in the alley, and do a foot search of the area to look for anything on the ground that the police might have missed. We didn’t know what we were looking for, but chances were if it was lying there and one of the homeless people saw it, they would have snatched it up and kept it.

  We released Brandon to the streets with intentions of digging deeper into his habits, where he currently lived, and what he was using for transportation. People like him were more transient than we were used to. An ID card with a home address and a vehicle registration in the DMV database meant nothing if his plan was to stay off our radar. Until we had more, we couldn’t build a case against him.

  It was pushing seven o’clock by the time we were back in our car. Renz called Taft to see if any of the agents were going to return to the office that night. She said we would review everything in the morning after Dave updated her on the autopsies with a more accurate time of death for all five victims.

  Renz drove us to the office, and we parted ways, each in our personal car. I was exhausted and still had a forty-five-minute drive home. All I wanted was a hot meal, a shower, and a warm bed to climb into.

  I called Amber as I drove. “Hey, Sis, what’s for supper?”

  “You mean the supper we had an hour and a half ago?”

  I chuckled. “Yeah, that supper. I’m starving and haven’t had anything but a bag of chips since our fast-food lunch earlier today.”

  “Well, I can easily heat everything up. When will you be home?”

  I glanced at the time on the dash. “In forty minutes.”

  “Good. Expect a couple pieces of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and canned corn.”

  My stomach growled from the description, and I couldn’t wait to dig into that chicken. “Sounds delicious, and I’ll see you soon.”

  As I drove, I thought about Brandon and how we would prove he had a connection to Jane Doe’s murder, if he actually did. Forensics was already at the scene, according to the text Renz had sent me minutes earlier, and if lucky, they might find Brandon’s prints somewhere on the dumpsters. Yet as damning as that seemed, it didn’t put a knife in his hand or give us an eyewitness account of him committing the crime. We had a long way to go with nobody else on our radar as a suspect—and that was just one of the five murders we were dealing with.

  I pulled into the garage at twenty after eight. I couldn’t believe what I’d thought would be a relaxing Saturday in front of the boob tube while bingeing on made-for-TV movies had turned into a twelve-hour workday.

  Inside the house, I found Amber and Kate doing exactly what I was thinking about five minutes prior—bingeing on TV movies, each with a beer and sharing a bowl of extra buttery popcorn.

  I dragged myself through the door and leaned against the framework as I stared at them.

  Amber paused the TV. “What?”

  “You guys have life by the ass.”

  Kate laughed. “Says the girl who thought working in one county was too restrictive. She needed to get out there, solve crimes across the country, and fly around in an FBI-owned jet like a celebrity. And now with your latest promotion, you’re gone even more.” She elbowed Amber. “But now, when you have one local case to solve, you’re whining about us having it made.”

  Amber pointed a thumb at Kate. “Yeah, what she said.”

  I laughed. They made their point and were absolutely right. I was hungry and cranky. “Hey, what’s the word for hungry and cranky?”

  “Jade?”

  “No, I mean the combination of the words.”

  Kate contorted her face. “Hunky?”

  We laughed.

  “I need to sit my ass down. Where’s that damn chicken?”

  Amber joined me in the kitchen and pointed at the table. “Then sit. I’ll warm your plate in the microwave. Want a beer?”

  “Sure, thanks, Sis.”

  Seconds later, with a beer and a plate of hot food in front of me, I dug in, and Amber returned to her movie and popcorn.

  “Hey, just so you know.”

  I heard Amber’s groan as she paused the TV again. “What?”

  “I love you guys.”

  Kate chuckled. “And we love you too. Now leave us the hell alone so we can watch this movie.”

  I ate my meal, said good night, and headed to the shower. In twenty minutes, I would be in bed and drifting off to sleep, and I couldn’t wait.

  Chapter 11

  A meeting between Jacob, Evelyn, and their followers began at seven o’clock on Sunday morning. Names had been chosen and tasks assigned for each recruit based on their ambition and ability.

  Brandon had been designated to take care of the riskiest task, but with the new development that had been forwarded to Jacob, it looked like Brandon had to be eliminated. There wasn’t room in the plans
for anyone to go off on their own, do what they wanted, and end up in police custody. There was no excuse for taking that risk, and now, they would be one recruit short.

  The recruit who Evelyn had thought would be her pride and joy had failed them miserably, and the consequences would be severe. She and Jacob had spoken with Brandon’s handler, who was the person who had seen Brandon being escorted to a police car the day prior and alerted Jacob. Erik Smalley would have to deal with the fallout and personally perform the tasks that Brandon would have been assigned.

  Envelopes had been prepared for the meeting and contained sheets of paper listing the name of each victim, their address, their manner of death, and the time the deed was to be done. Each task was outlined in precise detail and set to take place later that night. Brandon would get his envelope just like the others so as not to raise suspicion, but Erik would also get those same instructions. After the meeting, he would take care of Brandon then complete what would have been Brandon’s task later that night.

  “Any questions?” Jacob asked after instructing Erik on his role and duties.

  “No questions, sir. I’m just glad we’re going to nip this in the bud before it goes any further. I have no idea why Brandon went back to the underpass, but it was a reckless move on his part. Luckily, after I spotted him, I followed him to Hemmer Street where I saw two plainclothes cops escort him to a squad car. What went on behind closed doors at the police station is anyone’s guess, but now he’s too much of a risk to continue on. The cops might be following him wherever he goes.”

  Evelyn looked startled. “What the hell? They better not be following him, or they’ll find all of us in here.”

  “I scanned the area before coming in, ma’am, and didn’t see anyone other than the typical vagrants who are always outside.”

  Jacob nodded. “Okay, okay, let’s get this meeting over with and go our separate ways. I want to be notified as soon as Brandon is no longer a threat.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  The meeting began, and just as before, a basket of envelopes was passed to the recruits. Each envelope had a name on it, and the recruit took the corresponding one.