Eleven (Brandon Fisher FBI Series #1)

by Carolyn Arnold

  Zachery snapped his fingers. “Yes. Nancy Windermere said her daughter knew Bingham. Maybe he sensed it off her, or she told him.”

  Everyone went silent, and Jack’s cell phone rang.

  He answered, “Nadia, you’re on speaker.” He pushed a button and placed the cell on the table.

  “Okay, you’re going to love me.”

  “We already do,” Zachery said.

  “Oh, I mean even more—”

  “Nadia.” That’s all Jack needed to say. His tone carried the implication of get to the point.

  “I’m still working my way through all the Twitter followers but I came across one I know you’ll be interested in.”

  “Name?”

  “One thing at a time. I logged onto his Twitter account. Now there wasn’t anything that stood out to me at first but I went to his messages again and there was a new message in there.” Nadia’s voice shrank. “It was about you Brandon.”

  My heart palpitated. “What exactly?”

  “It was from The Redeemer to a profile name of HighScore. The message was just your name without the at symbol.”

  “He was pointing me out.”

  “But there’s more. I found out the guy’s real name, pulled a background. He lives in Owingsville. That’s in Bath County too, only about eight miles west—”

  “That’s where my photo was mailed from.”

  She was quiet for a few seconds. “Now there’s more. His real name is Earl Royster—”

  “The CSI,” I cut Nadia off and turned to Jack. “He led us through the tunnels, filled us in on the find. He’s the one who had the allergies and kept sneezing.”

  Jack rose to his feet. “Let’s go pick him up.”

  “Forwarding you all his info and address now.”

  Jack’s cell chimed with notification of the message, and Nadia disconnected the call.

  I found it hard to move. To think we had all been so close to a killer and didn’t even know made me realize what some assumed about FBI Special Agents wasn’t true. They weren’t a type of superhero. They were just people who possessed flaws, some of which could get them killed.

  “Hello.”

  Turning I saw Betty, but not before I heard Jack say, “Mrs. Miller, are you okay?”

  “Oh, I’m fine.” Her body quivered as if fighting a chill. Her hands rubbed her arms. She looked around the space which was barren except for us and an employee. “I know you’re not in-investigatin’ missin’ persons. I can handle it. Was Sally one of the victims?”

  Paige extended a hand to Betty’s shoulder. The older woman moved out of reach. “As I said, I’m fine dear.”

  Paige stepped back. “Why don’t you sit down?”

  “You people are treatin’ me like a child. I’m a grown woman. I can handle the truth.”

  Jack gestured to a chair that remained pulled back from the table. “What have you heard?”

  She reluctantly sat down, and the rest of us joined her. “Ten people murdered. All buried beneath that man’s property.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “People ’round here talk even when they’re not s’posed to.” Her eyes flitted to each of us. “Oh God!” A flattened hand clasped over her mouth. Her head shook. She must have read our eyes. “Y’all know sometimes I wish people were wrong. Bingham killed all of them?”

  “We’re working on investigating who killed those people and why.”

  “Why? Does that matter? Just lock up the son of a gun for life.”

  “It doesn’t necessarily work that way. In order to get answers, sometimes we need to know why.”

  Arms crossed.

  “You can help us though.”

  “How’s that?” Her eyes snapped up to meet Jack’s.

  “Did Kurt McCartney go to Lakeview Community Church?”

  “My, that was a long time ago. But ya know? I think he did. Like I said they wasn’t in town long.”

  Jack looked to the rest of us. “What about Earl Royster?”

  The older lady thought for a while. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “We need you to keep this quiet, Betty. Don’t be telling anybody about what we’ve spoken about.”

  She nodded.

  Owingsville had a population of about fifteen hundred, making it larger than Salt Lick, but still only large enough to make a pinprick on a map. We all piled into one SUV, leaving the other at Betty’s Place, and headed to Earl Royster’s house on Harrisburg Road.

  Jack drove and somehow managed to only smoke one cigarette en route. I didn’t look forward to peeling my clothes off tonight at the hotel. The scent had leeched into the fabric yesterday as if it had a Velcro-like quality.

  We rode in silence, the rest of the team likely thinking about the case, analyzing all the details of what we knew so far and considering what we speculated on. All I could think about was confronting this son of a bitch. While the rest of them didn’t seem to take the threat to my life seriously, I did. Honestly, I was surprised by the fact they didn’t view the photo, or the single-worded Twitter message a threat. My concern was over my wellbeing and Debbie’s. If Bingham had communicated to the other killer about me, was she safe? My cell phone rang. It was the same ringtone as before.

  “She’s calling again?” Jack turned his head to look at me in the passenger seat.

  I pulled out my personal cell and chose ignore.

  “Take that as a yes.” Jack’s eyes were on the road now.

  I looked out the window to the fields that extended to the horizon in all directions.

  “She’s having a hard time adjusting to you being on the road.” Paige’s voice sliced through the tension.

  “We’re not used to being apart.”

  The onboard system chirped, and Jack answered. It was Nadia.

  “Jones contacted me with the medical records for Travis Carter. He shares the same injuries as the first victim. He said if we got a DNA sample from his mother we’d have absolute certainty.”

  “He told us the same.” Jack ended the call.

  “We’ll need to notify Ellie Carter that we found her son,” I said.

  Jack turned to face me. “We will, but not yet.”

  “She’s been waiting years for closure.”

  “Then a few more days won’t matter.”

  “That’s your comeback to that?” I knew my attitude was surfacing prematurely to what I had intended. I must have been crazy to think it would lay dormant for my two-year probationary period.

  “It doesn’t benefit our case to let her know yet—”

  “Watch out!”

  Jack swerved the SUV just before hitting the loose gravel on the side of the road. “You’re going to have to learn to watch your mouth Kid.”

  My earlobes heated as if on fire. I was tiring of being called Kid or Slingshot all the time. I had gone through the training and the education. I had been deemed worthy of being a Special Agent. Why was it so hard for the man to show me some respect?

  “We’re here.” Jack pulled the SUV in front of small bungalow with a chain link fence that surrounded the property. There was no driveway, but the Nissan registered to Royster sat out front.

  “Doesn’t look like much,” Zachery stated the obvious.

  “He wouldn’t be able to afford much.” Jack pulled the keys from the ignition. “Zach and Paige, you guys watch the perimeter in case the guy makes a run for it.” He looked at me before reaching for the door handle, his eyes going to my seat belt. “You coming?”

  As I unclipped the belt, I wondered what had made Jack so nonchalant, uncaring and opposed to hope. I’d find out whether he wanted me to know or not.

  “Now you let me do the talking. You’re too involved,” Jack said, a hand going to his holster.

  I couldn’t argue. The patterns taught us Bingham had an order of doing things, alternating male and female. The next victim would be male. All I could think about was the freshly dug grave that didn’t have an occupant. I didn’t
want to be the one pressed into it. I didn’t want to become number eleven.

  Jack unlatched the gate with one hand and held his gun raised in the other. I had my hand on my holster and followed behind.

  “Whatcha doing over there?” A man called out from across the street.

  “FBI business. Please go inside,” I said.

  “Earl’s police.”

  Jack spoke to me with his eyes on Royster’s house. “You take care of it.”

  I hurried across the street. “We need you to go back inside your house.”

  “You’re mighty young, ain’t ya?” He moved to look past me.

  I followed his gaze. Jack was just on the other side of the gate.

  “What business do y’all have with Earl?” His brows sprouted silver hairs, easily the length of an inch, and they bobbed as he spoke.

  “It’s a private matter, but I ask that you either go back inside your house or leave—”

  A gun shot.

  Glass shattered.

  I pushed the man down flush with the road and huddled over him. As we lay there, I looked across the street. A bullet had fired through Earl’s front window.

  Everything turned to silence. We waited it out for what seemed like seconds that turned into minutes that turned into hours.

  “In the house.” I directed him. “Stay low.”

  The man nodded, willing to comply now. I walked with him, both of us hunched down as if in a room with a low ceiling. “Do you have a back door?”

  “Yes.”

  We went through a fenced gate to the back of his house. “Anyone else at home?”

  “My wife.”

  Behind the shelter of the house, I straightened out. “Both of you go into the basement and wait for this to be over.”

  The man slowly resumed full height and matched eyes with me. They were saturated with fear and uncertainty, belief and mistrust. “Are you going to kill him?”

  “We will do what we need to.” I spoke the words and anticipated his reaction would be completely different from what it was. I thought he’d shake his head over the loss of life, but instead he put a hand on my shoulder and thanked me for saving his life.

  “You go protect us, son.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As I hurried back, in a hunched-over state, all I could think about was loss of life. My heartbeat held a thumping rhythm in my ears. My vision blurred from adrenaline.

  Another shot fired.

  My feet froze to the ground. The bullet whizzed by me.

  I was the target! Shit! Fuck!

  I took a deep breath. I had to keep moving. The son of a bitch was obviously a bad aim with a firearm—maybe why his preference to the blade. I set off into a run.

  “Put the gun down!” Jack’s yell bellowed through the street.

  Another round fired.

  More glass shattered.

  It halted my pace as a hiccup does a clean breath. A kickback of adrenaline was all that propelled me forward.

  “Put the gun down!” Jack yelled again, and hunched down beside the front stoop.

  “I didn’t do anything.” The voice came from inside.

  Jack yelled to me, “Keep alert!”

  I pulled my gun from its holster, ready to fire. My training took over, willing my extremities to move, while inside I feared the taking of a man’s life. Even knowing this man had inadvertently threatened mine, I found it hard to contemplate ending his.

  “Put the gun down. Come out with your hands in the air!”

  Sobs came from inside the house.

  “Come out with your arms in the air!”

  “It was just…a joke.” Earl’s speech was fragmented by deep-throated sobs.

  “Come out now!”

  “No. I can’t. Y’all will kill me.”

  “We just want to talk.” There was a slight difference in Jack’s tone of voice. His words spoke of reassurance but he would pull the trigger, without hesitation, and kill this man if he had to.

  “It wasn’t—” More sobbing. “I didn’t mean for it to come to this.”

  My eyes scanned the neighborhood. There were no more nosey neighbors checking out the situation. The shots fired must have been enough to turn most of them wise and retreating into their houses.

  “This doesn’t have to end badly.” Jack spoke as he moved closer to the door.

  “Stop!”

  Jack’s hand was on the door handle. He pulled it back.

  Earl had moved closer to the front door. The front window had been completely destroyed. The tempered glass had fractured into large beads, leaving only grilles and the vinyl sash.

  “You don’t know what it’s like to be me.” More sobs.

  “Let’s talk Earl. You tell us.” Jack’s tone softened. His strategy was at work in front of me. Define a level of correlation, make the unsub comfortable enough to let his guard down.

  The door handle turned. As it did, my stomach turned with it. Flashbacks to the burial site, to the victims, to the stretched corpses tied inside of a circular grave. The slash marks in their torsos, the death slice to their gut. The man who had stood across from me in the underground bunker just two days ago sneezing from allergies.

  The door’s seal broke, and it opened. Earl stood there in plaid boxers. Tears had stained his cheeks and carved crooked trenches down his face. His left hand held a gun.

  “Put down the gun.” Jack held his at the level of Earl’s forehead.

  Earl’s arm moved upward.

  “Put it down!”

  “I didn’t mean to do it! I swear!”

  Jack held out his other hand, flattened palm toward Earl. “We can talk, but you need to put the gun down first. This doesn’t have to end badly.”

  “No one was supposed to get hurt.” His eyes went to me. His arm continued to rise until he had the barrel of the gun pointed at his own forehead. He spoke to me. “It was supposed to be funny.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  Again seconds transformed to minutes, minutes to hours, as I watched his finger on the trigger, waiting for him to pull it back. We needed to do something, and stop this from happening.

  “Think about your wife,” I said.

  Fresh tears fell. “What are you talking about?”

  “Your wife. You don’t want to leave her alone.”

  His arm faltered, the gun moving down slightly before he corrected the alignment. “I’m not m-married.”

  As he spoke I caught a glimpse of moving shadows behind Earl. I tried to bury the recognition, as I knew it was Paige and Zachery. “Did you help kill those people, Earl?”

  The gun shook. “No.”

  “Were you going to kill me?”

  He matched eyes with me. “No.”

  “Why send the picture to Bingham?”

  “I was told to.” He steadied his hold on the gun.

  “Do you do everything Bingham tells you to?” I knew I treaded on uneasy ground, but I needed to keep him talking, distracted from Paige and Zachery who moved up on him from behind.

  A fire of defiance sparked in his eyes.

  “You’ve known Bingham for a long time?”

  Earl swallowed deeply, audibly.

  “You don’t think he killed those people?”

  Earl’s arm dropped, the gun no longer pointed at his head. Zachery swept in behind him, but his shoes made a noise when he reached the vinyl flooring. Earl spun and raised his gun on Zachery.

  The shot fired.

  Earl fell to the floor.

  The entry way froze in silence as we each faced our own mortality. Another man dead, a man who didn’t need to die.

  Earl lay on the floor, blood pouring from the bullet hole at the nape of his neck—a death shot. Zachery bent forward, hands to his thighs, breathing deeply. No doubt he contemplated how he almost lost his life in the line of duty. Jack held his gun, smoke billowing from the barrel, to his side. Paige had a hand on Zachery’s shoulder and matched eyes with me.

&n
bsp; Jack pulled out his cell phone. “This is FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jack Harper, send a forensic team and get the coroner.” He gave them the address and hung up.

  “He didn’t have to die,” I said.

  “Us or them. I’ll always pick us.” Jack stepped over Earl and put his gun back in his holster.

  CHAPTER 16

  Within the hour, Harrisburg Road was full of activity. Jones hunched beside Earl Royster and looked up at me. “The man didn’t stand a chance.”

  I swore the coroner’s eyes were misted over.

  Truth was I didn’t like dead bodies when I knew what their voices had sounded like before leaving us. I could handle seeing the ones in the grave, only imagining, not knowing what they sounded like, who they had been. As we had waited on Crime Scene and the coroner to arrive, I had spent most of the time watching Earl as if he would somehow sit up and breathe again. Somehow, his death paid for the sin of the threat against me.

  “Kid.” Jack gestured for me to follow him.

  I maneuvered around Earl, doing my best not to contaminate the scene.

  “You don’t think he killed the girl, do you?” We stood in the dining room.

  “No.” I didn’t even need to give it more thought.

  “How do you explain the picture of you?”

  I didn’t really have an answer to that.

  “He shot at you.”

  “But he missed.”

  Two Crime Scene investigators came over to us. The one was about the same age as I am. His eyes were full of tears; though he let none of them fall. He addressed Jack. “I hear you killed Earl.”

  “I did.” Jack didn’t flourish his response by adding details, by attempts to justify his action.

  The CSI held eye contact with Jack, took a deep breath, and walked away. His colleague followed.

  The emotional impact left in their wake, of what wasn’t being said, was more powerful than what a thousand angry words would have contained.

  Jack patted his shirt pocket, and dropped his arm without taking out a cigarette. “So are you going to answer the question?”

  “How can you not have any feelings? A man is dead; you shot him. Those—” I pointed toward the CSIs whose backs were to us, “—were his friends, probably from childhood.”