Unafraid

by Allie Harrison

  And John wouldn’t mind being there to see that, either. “All in good time. Right now, I need for you to check in with a Police Detective named Emily Benton. She’s investigating some killer the media is pegging the Necktie Killer. Have you heard any of the story?”

  “Sorry Boss, I’ve been caught up the last few weeks with Smith.”

  “As we all have. It seems this guy leaves a calling card in the way of a red silk neck tie. Ring any bells?”

  “Didn’t Tex find a red tie in Bob Smith’s drawer of trophies?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a little too much of a coincidence,” Virgil let out.

  “Gil and I thought so, too. I’ll have Charlie send some files to your phone. Police records and information. You can check it out. But it looks like another girl is missing, a friend of Charlie’s. Not only do I want you to help find her, but I want to make certain this is not connected to Smith. And if we find out it is, I want to blow it out of the water before Smith figures out a way to use it to his advantage.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  John considered telling him he didn’t have to call him Sir. But then didn’t. It wouldn’t help, anyway. “And Virgil?”

  “Yes, Sir?”

  “Go see Dr. Henderson at St. Augusta Hospital and get an X-ray of your jaw before you hunt down Detective Benton. I already called him, and he expects you. Don’t make me take you there myself.”

  Virgil’s next, “Yes, Sir,” was not as enthusiastic.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Detective Emily Benton stepped out into the hall. For the life of her, she could never figure out how anyone got used to being in the morgue. It didn’t help the thermostat was kept on sixty-five degrees in there. Her insides were clammy. And while she had goose bumps, and she thought her teeth might chatter at any moment, there was a fire inside her, rolling fast like lava, making her feel again like she could throw up. She experienced this every time she had to come here, which was too often. Everyone else she knew seemed to get used to stepping into that cool room, but for her, the moment she smelled the antiseptic, her throat burned.

  “Here.”

  A man she didn’t know handed her a cold can of white soda.

  “I don’t drink anything with carbonation,” she said, even though she held the can.

  “Then hold it on the back of your neck. It’ll help you feel better.”

  She considered refusing, telling him she didn’t need it. After all, she was a seasoned cop, had crawled her way up the ladder to detective, having to fight twice as hard as any fellow male officer she knew simply because she had a vagina. The last thing she could ever do was show weakness. There was a constant circling of vultures over her head, just waiting for her to mess up so they could swoop down, point out her error and have her job like a head on a pike.

  But he didn’t look like a man ready to take her job. With his sad, puppy-dog brown eyes and his half-crooked smile, he looked like a man she could trust.

  She put the cold can on the back of her neck. He was right. It did cool her insides and help her feel better.

  “You’re Emily Benton, right?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  He flashed a badge that looked Federal. “Virgil. Virgil Gray.”

  “You’re a Fed?” It wasn’t exactly a question to which she needed an answer. What she wanted was his reaction to her questions. She didn’t mind Feds, as long as they didn’t get in her way.

  “Sometimes.” His smile turned into a grin.

  She liked his sense of humor and raised her brows at his reply. She also liked the way his gaze seemed to take in every part of her. “What can I do for you, Sometimes Agent Gray?”

  “Ah, I like a woman with a sense of humor.”

  “Sometimes I have to look at dead bodies in this job. It helps to have one.”

  “What do you drink?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “If you don’t drink anything carbonated, what do you drink? Coffee? Tea? Jack Daniels?”

  His question drew a chuckle from her. “Not while I’m on the job.” She didn’t point out that was virtually all the time. “But why do you want to know?”

  “I’m working a case, and I think we need to compare notes.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, I have a guy in custody who has a drawer full of mementos and souvenirs from his victims, which I might add is a very long list. He had a red silk tie. Ring any bells for you?”

  Actually, it made her heart race.

  She maintained her poker face. “It could be coincidence.”

  “Yes, it could. I’d rather not find out later that it’s not. Have a drink with me.”

  “Yes.” Her single word was a whisper. She’d put every bit of information about these victims into the computer, looking for any slip of a connection that may lead her in the right direction. And she’d come up with zilch. Now here was this good-looking guy with an honest face who looked more military than government. He also looked like he was someone who could tuck her into bed at night and keep her safe. And he had a possible connection? Could she get that lucky? Hell, she’d never depended on luck in her life or her career.

  “Maybe it’s a coincidence, but this guy is far from coincidental. I thought maybe we could compare notes.”

  She had to do something. Sarah Cummings had less than a week if the killer didn’t change things up. “I’ll settle for a smoothie.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Detective Emily Benton was not what he expected. Although he wasn’t really certain what he expected. He imagined she was a high school cheerleader, at least she looked like one. All she needed was the short, cute skirt, a bow in her hair holding back the no-nonsense pony tail, and a set of pompons. But Virgil bet if he mentioned any of it to her or asked her about it, she’d pop him, and one punch to the face a day was enough.

  He let her pick the place for her smoothie. After he locked his badge in the glove compartment, he followed her in his own car. It was some organic, supposedly healthy place that didn’t fry anything called The Healthy Soul. They sat in a booth where he, of course, could view the entire place. For him, old habits didn’t die hard. They didn’t die at all.

  “So, what do you think of your smoothie?” she asked.

  He used a spoon to eat it. His jaw still hurt like a mad bastard, but a spoon was easier than pursing his lips around a straw and sucking. “It’s not a chocolate malt, but it’s pretty good. It’s really made with spinach and carrots?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, don’t tell my colleagues I’m enjoying anything so healthy. Oh, never mind, go ahead and tell them. They won’t believe you.”

  When she laughed, her whole face seemed to laugh. “So you’re one of the cops that make all of us look bad by eating donuts?”

  “Every chance I get.”

  “How’d you get that bruise on your chin?”

  He had decided from the moment he first met her gaze, he would be as honest as possible with her. And so far, he had. He wasn’t stopping now. “A guy hit me this morning.”

  “You ate his favorite donut, or what?”

  “I bumped into him.”

  She studied him for a long moment. “That’s it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Did you hit him back?”

  He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, she would have hit him back as soon as she peeled herself off the pavement. Hell, she would have plowed him to the ground. She probably would have blocked his punch, too, as he had had to fight against doing. It wasn’t in his nature and training to simply let someone hit him. But the job, the mission had called for it. “Not yet.”

  She chuckled again. “Let me know when you plan to. I want to be there. I want to watch.”

  “I’ll keep you posted.” He took another bite. “And I have to ask you a favor.”

  “Ask away, but I won’t promise to give it to you.”

  Of course she wouldn’t, he thought. She’d do whatever was
necessary to get her job done. He was liking her more and more with every second. “I have to ask you to keep any meeting or note swapping between only us.”

  She eyed him carefully. “Why?”

  “Because I’m supposed to be on vacation. It was a…requested vacation, not requested by me. I was actually recommended to skip town for a while. I didn’t. And if the wrong people find out I’m still here snooping around, it could mean trouble for me. And for you.”

  She studied him for another long moment, her pretty pink lips around the straw of her smoothie even though she wasn’t drinking. Then she smiled. “A true rabble-rouser. I love it. Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “Good. So tell me about your guy.”

  “I wish I had a lot to tell, but I don’t. Two women are dead, a third is missing. He takes them right off the parking lots of public places—the college, the grocery store, the mall. He knows how to move so his face isn’t caught on any security camera. It wasn’t until today with the third victim that we discovered how he takes them. Sarah Cummings told the nine-one-one dispatcher there was a baby crying inside a van before he grabbed her. A crying baby would get someone’s attention, generally a woman. That mother instinct always manages to come out. Anyway, he tortures them, rapes them, and kills them. They have several deep puncture wounds. I think he gives them the sense they can escape in some way. They’re covered with scratches as if they’d run through the woods. They’re found in public parks, sitting on benches naked except for matching red silk panties and bras, and they have a man’s tie around their neck, silk, tied like a man wears it with a suit, also red silk.”

  Virgil stirred his drink as he listened to the frustration in her voice. “But that isn’t how he kills them?”

  “No. They bleed out, but not quickly, from the puncture wounds. Some of the wounds are several days old, beginning to heal.”

  She stirred her smoothie with her straw, and it was a long moment of quiet before she took a drink. “So, tell me about your guy.”

  “He’s a career criminal. He’s been involved in everything—rape, murder, attempted murder, extortion, robbery. You name it, I’d bet he’s done it.”

  “So he never has the same MO?”

  “Except for being methodical and well-planned, a whiz at using a computer, and knowing just who to threaten to get what he needs, no. I will admit to you he’s the scariest bastard I’ve ever seen. He even covered his tracks with a wife and two little kids. Crime thrills him. His drawer of souvenirs included hair and panties and jewelry. There were even two teeth in a little throat lozenge tin. And there were three knives with dried blood on them that we’re trying to connect to a victim. And of course, there was one neck tie. Folded neatly, tied perfectly like a man would wear it with a suit.”

  “My God. I’d love to ask him a few questions. Who is he?”

  Virgil stopped idly stirring his melting smoothing. “You’re not getting near him. If it were up to me, he’d never get within a mile of any woman. Or any human. And he’d wear an iron mask he could never take off his face so if he ever managed to get free, he’d still be imprisoned by that.”

  She was quick enough to catch the no-nonsense tone in his voice. “So you think he is connected to my guy?”

  “I happen to know he’s connected to a lot of people. He finds out whatever he can—like if they have sick kids and he uses that to his advantage.”

  “And you think he’s working with my guy?”

  “I don’t know. I know my guy hasn’t made a phone call and he’s in custody. So he may not even know about the girl taken today. At least not yet.”

  “It doesn’t mean they aren’t connected,” she pointed out. “Hell, they could have gone to school together.”

  “I know that.” He looked down for a long moment as if answers were hidden in the creamy green drink he was enjoying, at least until he started talking about Smith and remembering all the horrid shit he’d done. Virgil contemplated how much to tell her. He wondered when she might figure out the man on the newscast on the television above her head was his guy. “I also know my guy had many associates, people he threatened in order to get them to do his dirty work. And the neck tie is too much of a coincidence.”

  “And you think my guy might be one of his associates?”

  “Or they crossed paths sometime in the last twenty years and fed off each other or, at the very least, learned from one another.”

  “I don’t think I like the sound of that.”

  He noticed she hadn’t taken a drink of her smoothie in several minutes. “I don’t either.”

  “If this guy is so bad and you know about him, why were you sent on vacation?”

  Virgil grinned, finally a question he could answer with complete honesty. “He’s a pretty big fish, I guess the powers that be thought a little peon like me shouldn’t be involved. I guess they also thought when he leads them to closing so many cold cases, they could take the credit.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  Virgil grinned, but the action sent another flash of pain through his face, reminding him of Shackleford and the look on that prick’s face just before his fist made contact with Virgil’s jaw. At least according to his X-ray, it wasn’t broken. If Virgil got the chance, he planned to make certain before this was over that Shackleford was done with the Bureau. “Now that’s a question, isn’t it? It’s another reason why my friends and I need to stay below the radar on this one. If this heads south, and the bigwigs who sent us on vacation know we’ve been here the whole time, they’ll face that shit-spraying fan on us.”

  He took another spoonful of his smoothie. It cooled his face and his throat. He studied Emily Benton. Pretty. Smart. Quick. Good. She had a deep, authoritative voice that he’d like to hear as a whisper. He liked her. And he understood why and how his leader, John Brandenburg, A.K.A Marlin, could meet a barista and ask her out to dinner ten minutes later. Because he was about to do the same thing.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Without complaint, Bob Smith stepped back into the small-town lock-up where he was being held. He was surprised he wasn’t transported to some place more Federal, but he suspected they didn’t quite know what to do with him yet. Maybe they thought this was a better place to hide him from the media. Or perhaps his father had given specific instructions. He hadn’t heard from his father, and he didn’t expect to. After all, he hadn’t heard from the former FBI Director in twenty years, after the man had told him his son was dead to him.

  He didn’t mind staying in this small town. It was ten miles from his home. When he managed to escape, he could stop in there and get what he needed to disappear. Besides, he hoped the small-town cops would not be as hardcore as others. The agents assigned to him were another story. Shackleford was a loaded weapon looking for a place to go off. And Brubaker…

  Brubaker seemed like a hardass, but at the same time, there was something knowing about him. Every time he caught Brubaker watching him, he felt Brubaker knew something he didn’t. Smith didn’t like that.

  He just needed to be patient. Things came to him. They always did. Soon he would learn what made Brubaker tick, and he would be able use it to his advantage.

  Just inside the door behind the front desk was a television. A pretty reporter, in a red dress that showed her curves and cleavage, reported on a third woman who was abducted. “Her family and friends will hold a candlelight vigil tonight, praying for her safe return. It is feared she’s been taken by the killer known as the Necktie Killer, a ruthless murderer whose calling card has been a red silk neck tie. Two other women have fallen victim to him in the past three weeks. If you’d like to be a part of the vigil tonight, participants are encouraged to meet at St. Stephen’s Church at seven. Please see our website for complete information.”

  It was the first time he’d seen television since he’d been shot and arrested. He hadn’t wanted to see his own picture on TV.

  A red silk man’s neck tie?

  As Shacklefor
d put him back into his cell, he commented, “What are you grinning about, Smith? You look like the cat that swallowed the canary.”

  Smith just grinned more and said nothing but thought, yum. What a wonderful day it was. After watching Brubaker for the past several hours, and seeing how he reacted to various situations and giving him a body to find, Smith thought he was well on his way to being free. Like icing on a cake, he now learned after all this time, his very first associate had graduated to acting on his own.

  Smith felt just like the proud parent. At the very least, a proud older sibling.

  “I need to speak with the FBI, and I’d prefer it be you, Agent Shackleford.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Alexander Brubaker climbed back into his provided SUV after making certain Smith was returned to his cell, and after making countless—useless unless a mistake was made—reports. Damn, he hated reports. He hated having to relay his every action to people above him. It made him feel like a child standing before his father.

  He was dusty, gritty, and he was pretty sure he was smelly. None of which he needed. None of which he liked any more than he liked the reporting. He needed a shower. He needed fresh clothes. At least the small hotel room he’d rented in Lake Forrest was adequate. It wasn’t the Ritz, but it had a big bed, WiFi, and an adequate shower. And it was clean and free of bugs.

  He had taken note of the sign on the morning’s lunch truck and he planned to end the day with a massage. Hell, that pretty lunch lady had strong hands. He knew she’d be able to massage him all night. And he had to admit, red nail polish always turned him on. Why not let her meet him at the hotel and shower with him? They could order in pizza, eat naked, spend the night making one another happy. It would give him the resilience to deal with Smith another day since he couldn’t deny that by the end of the day, the psycho was beginning to creep him out. Smith might be the criminal and case to make him an associate director, but Brubaker believed the guy needed to be put where he’d never see the sun again.