Victim 14

by KJ Kalis

  Cash’s own personality put him somewhere in the middle, he reasoned. But this case brought out his serious side. He drummed his fingers on the table as Janet went through the basics of what they knew so far. It wasn’t much. As soon as she finished speaking, Cash interrupted, “Janet, am I remembering wrong, or is this the first child that’s been taken in Tifton?” Cash frowned as he waited for her to answer, trying to remember if they’d recovered any young bodies before. He didn’t think so.

  “No,” Janet said, thumbing through the enormous stack of case files. “This is the first time that we know of. Could there be other bodies we don’t know about? That’s certainly a possibility with this guy.” Janet looked at Cash, the FBI badge swinging around her neck from side to side as she stood up. “Okay, Cash. I’m done. You can take it from here.”

  Cash knew other supervising field agents would’ve been offended at the way that Janet spoke to him. Cash didn’t care. As long as she did the job, that was what mattered. “All right. A few of you were with the same team six months ago when we went to Tifton, so you know the drill. A couple of you weren’t, so talk to your colleagues or come and talk to either me or Janet with any questions.” Cash glanced down at the time on his cell phone, “Let’s be ready to roll in ten minutes. We’ll meet downstairs in the garage. Don’t forget your go bags. We likely won’t be coming back for several days.” As the sound of chairs scraping on the floor echoed through the nearly empty room, Cash looked at Janet, “You bringing the binder?”

  Janet nodded. “Wouldn’t leave home without it,” she said, picking it up.

  The binder was the paper copy of every case the FBI had connected to the Tifton torso killer. Although technology was nice, the agency had gotten themselves into more than one scrape where Wi-Fi or cell service wasn’t available, and they needed details from the case file. That’s how the binder was born. Not that they needed it every time they went out, or that it held every piece of information that Cash might need to make decisions, but it was a start in case of a tech failure.

  Cash stopped in his office, flipping on the light to see if there was anything he forgot. He could still smell the remains of the sub sandwich from the night before, the odor of onions lingering in the air. From the hook on the back of his door, he picked up his FBI windbreaker. It was outrageously hot outside, but you never knew what kind of weather you might run into on the southeast coast. Something inside of Cash sunk. How could he be going back to Tifton again? What if they came back in a few days with nothing more to tell than they went and did an investigation, like with every other killing on this case? Butterflies formed in Cash’s stomach. He couldn’t come back without having found the little girl, no matter who had her. He needed a win, not just for his career, but for his confidence. No matter what it seemed like to the people of Tifton, he’d spend hours focused on their case. He just hoped he could solve it in time to save the girl. With another glance around, Cash shut off the light and locked the door, slinging his backpack over his shoulder and picking up his duffle bag from outside the door.

  The ride in the elevator down to the parking garage was silent, Cash stepping in with two other agents, their backpacks and go bags with them. Cash checked the time on his cell phone. It was just after seven-thirty in the morning. With any luck, they’d arrive in Tifton by nine. He’d send half the team directly over to Lexi Cooper’s house and send another couple of people to go get rooms at the local bed-and-breakfast. At least it was a nice facility, he thought, sighing, as the elevator doors offered a quiet ping and then slid open.

  Parked right in front of the doors were two matching black SUVs. How many the government bought every year, Cash wasn’t sure, but it had to be a lot. The engines were running with the back doors open ready for bags and laptops. The motor pool was great about keeping the cars in good condition, fully gassed up and ready to go.

  Cash walked to the lead vehicle, setting his backpack in the back and pushing his go bag near it. He glanced over his shoulder at another agent who came up behind him, “Don’t smash my backpack. It’s got my laptop in it.” The other agent nodded as Cash walked away.

  Walking to the driver’s side, Cash got in. Sometimes he liked to drive, other times he preferred to watch his cell phone as he got updates on the case while they traveled. If this case was anything like the other Tifton cases, they wouldn’t have any more information until they got there. Thinking about the fact that they were going back to Tifton again sent a wave of nausea over him. Would this be the time they caught the killer?

  Two minutes later, the last door on the SUVs closed with a thump and the driver behind Cash signaled they were ready to go. The two matching vehicles drove head-to-tail out of the parking garage, only slowing slightly for the speed bumps. As they approached the entrance, the gate automatically opened and Cash spun the SUV to the right, heading for the freeway entrance.

  The drive to Tifton wasn’t a difficult one. All Cash had to do was jump on freeway five twenty-four, and head west until they were far out in the country and then merge onto some rural roads to get into the city of Tifton. It wasn’t really a city, though. Just a couple of neighborhood stores and a school that gave Tifton a location on a map. That was one of the things that was the most perplexing about the case, Cash thought, staring at the GPS for a moment. It wasn’t like Tifton had a huge population where the killer could go around and have his choice of who he’d like to take. If he knew anything at all about Tifton, he knew it was a close-knit community. It surprised him that no one had any inkling of who was doing the killing. Or at least if they did know, they wouldn’t say...

  Janet, who was sitting next to him, broke the silence. “Penny for your thoughts?”

  Cash glanced at her and mumbled, “What do you think?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe you’re tossing around the new recruits LSU is going to put on the field this year? Maybe they might be able to win another national championship?”

  Cash shook his head. Janet’s sense of humor was well-placed, at least most of the time. “I’m not exactly thinking about football right now, Agent.” He knew that calling her agent would sting, but he was trying to concentrate, trying to figure out why the killer had escalated to a child.

  “Well, someone certainly needs their coffee this morning. How about if you tell me what’s really on your mind?”

  Cash could tell Janet wasn’t going to take any notice of the barb he’d sent her way. “I’m just trying to wrap my brain around why a child got taken this time. Are you sure he’s never taken a child before?”

  Janet glanced down at the binder sitting on her lap. The navy-blue vinyl cover was emblazoned with large gold letters that read FBI, in the same design as their jackets, T-shirts and other gear. “No, we don’t know of any other children that have disappeared. Primarily, the killer targets other men. There’s been a woman or two, but it’s been mostly men.”

  That tracked with what Cash knew of the case. In his mind, and more importantly, based on what the profilers thought, the killer was most likely male. What the profilers weren’t sure about was the motivation behind dismembering the bodies. Was it because the killer was simply trying to cover his tracks, or was it something more? For some reason, Cash’s gut told him it had something to do with the rage inside of the perp. A rage that couldn’t be contained…

  13

  The news that another person had been taken in Tifton threw Emily into gear. She got dressed and grabbed her backpack, heading down a back flight of steps she’d found at the bed-and-breakfast. There was no time to stop for a meal now. Emily jumped in the truck, starting it up. She called Mike back. “Can you give me the address of where Lexi lives?”

  There was a pause, “I don’t think…”

  Emily knew what Mike was going to say. It probably wasn’t safe for her to get that close to local law enforcement. There was no telling if the FBI had been called or how quickly they might be on their way. But the fact that a child had been taken changed t
he game a little. Sure, Emily wanted to find the killer to get justice for Sean Barker and his family, but if the torso killer had the little girl, time was ticking.

  A second later, her GPS beeped. Mike had inputted the new address. “Okay, you should see it now. You’re only a couple of minutes out. But Emily...”

  “...I know, be careful. Stay by your phone.” Emily ended the call before Mike did. The last thing she needed him to do was babysit her. She knew the risks, even better than he did.

  The drive over to Lexi’s house seemed to take an excruciating amount of time, even though it was just a few minutes. It might be just the few minutes Emily needed to get information about the case before the FBI got there. She pressed the accelerator a little harder.

  Turning down a side street, Emily slowed her truck. She passed by a small white house with black shutters, two Tifton Township police cars in the driveway and a third parked on the street. She pulled up ahead of the cars, seeing a couple of people outside of another house that was on a diagonal from where Lexi Cooper lived. Nosy neighbors. Getting out, Emily walked over to the cluster of people. “What’s going on here?” Emily lied.

  One of the people in the group, a man with an egg-shaped face, stared at her, “You haven’t heard?”

  Emily shook her head and made her eyes go wide, “No. I’m here visiting my cousin. That’s a lot of police cars for such a small town, don’t you think?”

  The man looked down for a second and then glanced at another woman in the group. Must be his wife, Emily thought. He cleared his throat, “The little girl that lives over there — she’s missing.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible…” Emily said, looking toward the house. A single officer had come out of the garage, his arms tan and muscular underneath his short-sleeved shirt. He’s got to be sweating something terrible, Emily thought, watching him key up the radio attached to his tactical vest. From where she was standing, she couldn’t hear what he said. It didn’t really matter. In a case like this, the FBI would be called. How long it would take them to arrive, she didn’t know.

  Emily didn’t have to wait long for an answer. She only stood around for a few minutes listening to the neighbor's chat when she heard the rumble of engines in the distance. Two sleek black SUVs, blue and red lights flashing just under the roof line, pulled up in front of the house. Simultaneously, all of the doors opened, blue T-shirted FBI agents with badges dangling around their necks or posted on their hips stepping out of the vehicles. Emily watched for a second, stepping toward the back of the crowd, using the other bodies as cover.

  “The FBI’s back,” one of the other women in the group said, mumbling. “Not that they ever do anything…”

  For a moment, Emily considered asking what the woman meant but decided against it. The less attention she drew to herself, the better. With the FBI arriving on the scene, Emily’s heart started to beat a little faster. What she had come to Tifton to do had just become exponentially harder than before. It was one thing to get justice for a victim and their family years after the incident. It was something else to try to do it while law enforcement was hovering all over the case like bees on honey.

  Emily stood for another second, staring. Her phone, stashed in her back pocket, vibrated. It was a text from Mike. “FBI has been notified.”

  “Yeah, I see that,” Emily replied.

  “They’re there already?”

  “Yep. I’m looking at them.”

  When Emily looked up, one of the women in the group was staring at her. Emily blinked, “Just my cousin texting me. Wondered where I was.” Without saying anything else, Emily slid away from the group and walked to her truck. She didn’t look behind her. Making eye contact could be dangerous. She knew if she went straight to her vehicle, no one in the FBI would give her a second look, at least not right now. If she stayed and watched, they would begin taking pictures and identifying the onlookers. Serial killers, for that matter, many criminals, oftentimes had an urge to go back to the scene. Law enforcement had gotten wise to the practice and had implemented taking pictures of whoever was standing around watching them work as part of their investigation. The last thing Emily needed was some junior agent finding out she was a disgraced detective from the Chicago PD. That would ring more than a few alarm bells.

  Back at her truck, Emily started the engine and let out a long breath. She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding the air in her lungs, but she had. Pulling away from the scene, Emily could see two of the FBI agents talking to the police officer that was standing in the driveway. As they drifted out of her view, Emily called Mike. “All right, I’m clear. The FBI just crashed the party.”

  “What are you going to do? That’s going to make your job a lot harder.”

  “Well, we’re both going to have to be on top of our games. Is there any more news?”

  Emily continued down the street, away from Lexi Cooper’s house, but unsure of where she was going. The streets in Tifton curved in strange directions. It wasn’t as if the town was laid out on the north, south, east, west grid. Where the street headed, she didn’t know. She just whispered a silent prayer that the road didn’t loop back in front of Lexi’s house. The last thing she wanted was to be spotted by the FBI.

  “No, there’s nothing else new, other than some chatter about the FBI arriving. One of the deputies just joked that they’d be taking over the bed-and-breakfast again.”

  Emily rolled her eyes. As if it wasn’t hard enough to avoid them in a small town, now they’d be staying in the same hotel that she was. Emily made a mental note to try to figure out whether she should collect her belongings and check out and just sleep in her truck for the duration. She shook off the thought. There’d be time to figure that out later.

  “Okay, I’ll check in with you in a few hours.”

  Mike asked her, “Where you headed?”

  “I have no idea.”

  14

  The street Lexi Cooper’s lived on dumped back out on the main road. Emily gave a sigh of relief at not having to go back past Lexi’s house. Turning into the parking lot of an abandoned building, Emily pulled off to the side. Trying to figure out her next step now that the FBI was in town was giving her a headache. How was she going to operate with a bunch of federal agents sniffing around the town? Emily threw her truck into park and leaned back in the seat for a second, running through the options in her mind. She could just go home. That was always an option. She could go back to her life in Chicago, walking her dog and taking her boxing lessons. She could approach the case again once Lexi had been found or forget about it entirely. It was nice that Bradley had invested some time in her, but it didn’t mean she owed him anything. Or she could stay. She didn’t have to stay in Tifton. She knew she could drive a little further out, maybe find a hotel in a city nearby and stay there and wait for the FBI to get bored and leave. But, with a history of the serial killer in Tifton, that could take weeks. It was time she didn’t want to spend in Louisiana, with its hot and horribly humid weather.

  A second later, Emily threw the truck into reverse and pulled out of the parking lot. She knew what she needed to do. It was the reason she’d come down to Tifton in the first place — to help Bradley Barker get closure for his family. The memory of the haunted look on Bradley’s face the day before popped up in Emily’s memory. Those were the kind of people that deserved justice. That was the job she was in Tifton to do.

  Twelve minutes later, she pulled into Bradley’s driveway. It looked the same way as it did the day before, except for the fact that Emily didn’t have to wait for Bradley to come out. He was standing in the driveway as if he was expecting her. As Emily slid down out of the pickup truck, she called to him, “Waiting for me?”

  Bradley limped toward her, leaning on his cane, “Kinda wondered if you might stop by this morning.”

  “You heard?”

  Bradley nodded. “Got a text from one of my neighbors just after it happened. She lives on the same street as Lexi Cooper. Thoug
ht I’d want to know.”

  Emily looked at Bradley. He had a strange expression on his face. It was like there was more to the story than he was saying. Or maybe it was just his old pain surfacing? Emily wasn’t sure. “You mean, your friend wanted you to know because someone else was taken?”

  “Well, that, and there’s something else…”

  By the way Bradley said it, Emily knew it wasn’t good news. She frowned, knitting her brows together, suddenly feeling uneasy, “What is it?”

  “Lexi Cooper is the granddaughter of one of the first victims.”

  Emily’s mind began to spin. One of the relatives of an earlier victim had been taken by the same killer? In all of her years in law enforcement, Emily had never heard of anything like that. She sighed, staring down at her boots, kicking a little piece of gravel in Bradley’s driveway. Before she could say anything else, Bradley said, the words coming out slowly, “Come back to the garage. Let me show you.”

  Emily followed him, adjusting the holster on her hip and pulling her T-shirt down over the butt of her gun. She had a sinking feeling in her gut that wasn’t leaving her. Inside, Bradley flipped on the overhead lights, the bulbs buzzing. He walked over to the board where all the murder data was hung, his cane making a tapping noise on the concrete floor. “Here it is. See this man?” he said, pointing with his free hand as he leaned on the cane. “This is Junior Owen. He was body one-two. First-year, second body — at least the ones we know of — that’s what the law enforcement people say. At the time, he had a daughter who was in high school, Keira. She’s now married to a firefighter named Randy. They had a baby pretty much right away. That’d be Lexi. Lexi would’ve been Junior’s granddaughter.”