Victim 14

by KJ Kalis

  Today was not.

  Elliot stared at a picture of Sierra for a minute. He loved her and knew she was doing everything she could to help him, but he knew that underneath it all he was holding her back. He rubbed his fingers together. Elliot stared at the kitchen table. It was covered with bottles of pills — antidepressants, anti-anxiety medication, medicine to make him sleep, medicine to wake him up. It was all too much. His heart told him that Sierra didn’t need the hassle anymore. She’d never even gotten married, much less had a serious boyfriend, because she was so busy taking care of him. A wave of sadness covered Elliott. He turned back, looking at the little house where he and his wife had raised their kids, staring at the pictures and their old furniture.

  From the kitchen counter, he picked up the set of keys to his old Buick. Walking out into the garage, he left the overhead door closed, but firmly pulled the house door shut behind him. He felt empty inside. He stopped for a minute, staring at the walls, Sierra and Joe’s bikes still hanging from the ceiling, Sierra's pink handlebars, and Joe’s black ones. “Pink is for girls,” he remembered Joe saying the day they bought him his bicycle. “I want the black one.”

  Elliott shook his head as if trying to dislodge the thought. They should have been good memories, but they weren’t. He sat down on the step for a second, all the strength in his body seemingly gone. His mind replayed over and over again the faces of the police officers who came to his door to tell him that Joe’s body had been found in the Little Bayou Pond, or at least what was left of it. It was bad enough trying to bury your son but burying part of the mangled body didn’t soothe their grief at all. His wife had never been the same, constantly walking around the house with a haunted look on her face, until one day, she could take it no more. Elliott found her, cold on Joe’s bed. She hadn’t left a note. She didn’t need to. Elliott knew why she’d taken so many pills. He thought back to what the paramedics said, “I know it’s no consolation,” one of them said, putting his hand on Elliott’s arm, “but the pills she took would’ve put her to sleep first. She wouldn’t feel any pain.”

  Elliott stood up brushing his hands off on his pants. He walked over to the side door of the Buick and slid in, closing the car door behind him. He started the engine but didn’t raise the garage door. He rolled down the window and leaned the seat back, taking deep breaths of the sweet fumes from the engine. His mind flashed the pictures he’d seen on the news of Lexi Cooper, Joe, and Sierra over and over again. Life was no good anymore, he thought, as he drifted away.

  27

  Just after dropping off Bradley at his house, Emily’s phone rang. It was a number she didn’t recognize. Answering, she heard a female voice, “Emily?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Sierra. Remember? You came to my house and asked me about my brother?”

  “Sure. What can I do for you?”

  “I was just wondering if you had any new leads on the case?” There was silence for a second, then a sob, “I’m at the hospital. My dad, he tried to kill himself this morning.”

  Emily swallowed. “I’m so sorry. What happened?”

  “I went over to his house to bring him some breakfast. He’s been despondent the last couple of days. Seems only to mumble about Joe and Lexi — you know, the little girl that was taken?”

  Emily nodded, “Yes.”

  “Well, when I got there, he wasn’t in the house. I thought maybe he was in the garage getting something. When I opened the door, the entire garage was filled with fumes. I shut the car off and opened the garage door and got him out into some fresh air. He’s alive, but just barely.” Sierra sighed. “I think they’re going to admit him to the psych unit if he survives.”

  “That’s terrible, Sierra. I’m so sorry.”

  “Emily, someone has to stop this guy. This has destroyed my family. It’s like he kills my dad over and over again every single day. I don’t know what to do. Even if I try to get my dad more help, there’s no telling if he’ll try to kill himself again. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Emily weighed the situation in her mind, realizing that Sierra was on the verge of losing everything. First, Sierra lost her brother, then her mom, and now her father had decided that life wasn’t worth living anymore. Emily couldn’t imagine the weight on Sierra’s shoulders, just knowing that at any moment, she could lose what was left of her very small family. “I’m working on it,” she swallowed. “Keep me posted on your dad, all right?”

  “I will.”

  28

  Cash checked his cell phone for what seemed like the thousandth time that morning. There were no new leads in the Lexi Cooper case. The only thing they’d managed to find in the two days they’d been at the Cooper’s house was a small dent that looked like someone might’ve jimmied the window open and a few sparse footprints in the woods. Nothing conclusive. Nothing they could use to identify who had her. To top it all off, there hadn’t been any ransom demand and no sighting of her either. It was looking more and more like the torso killer.

  “Can I get you more coffee?” the waitress said, passing by his table again.

  Cash shook his head no, “Thanks, I’m okay.” As the waitress walked away, he watched her as she bounced from table to table, offering hot coffee to whoever might want it. Cash had been sitting in the restaurant for more than an hour, what was left of his breakfast growing cold. He’d left two agents at the Cooper’s house and told the rest of them to go get some sleep. But he couldn’t. This case is going to kill me, he thought, wrapping his fingers around the cup of coffee and taking a sip. It was lukewarm. He should’ve asked the waitress to heat it up when she passed by.

  Cash stared at his phone. He’d made calls to his boss and the profilers, trying to find a new angle they hadn’t already worked, but there was nothing to go on. The profiler he spoke to said, “I’m sorry, Cash. I can’t imagine how hard this is, but I don’t have anything for you. To save that little girl, you gotta have a lead, and we don’t have any.”

  In his gut, he knew what the profiler said was true. FBI profilers, their team of specialized psychologists, could only draw him a basic picture of who the killer might be. It wasn’t the same as forensic evidence — like fingerprints, or fibers or DNA — that could help them get closer to whoever did it.

  Cash fiddled with the coffee cup, turning it around in a circle and then setting it on top of his napkin. He needed a break in the case, that was a fact. How he was going to get it, he wasn’t sure.

  Without warning, Cash’s cell phone beeped. His phone wasn’t the only one. He glanced up, to see everyone in the restaurant huddled over their phones. He looked down, seeing an automatic alert from the National Weather Service, “Tropical storm warning issued for Clement County, including Tifton. Tune into your local news station for evacuation orders and more information.”

  Cash pounded his hand on the table. Seriously? A tropical storm. How was he supposed to conduct an investigation with howling winds coming up out of the Gulf? He quickly pulled up a weather app and checked the forecast. The first bands of rain would probably be arriving in the next few hours, followed by the swirl of the storm coming up out of the Gulf later on. Things were going to get nasty, and fast.

  Standing up from where he’d parked himself in the booth at the restaurant, he pulled a few dollars for a tip out of his wallet and took a last sip of the cold coffee before paying his check at the counter and heading out. It was hard enough to find a little girl in good weather, let alone the howling storm raging up out from over the ocean.

  Cash quickly sent a text to his team telling them to assemble at the bed-and-breakfast. It was time to meet and go over what they knew. Or, in this case, what they didn’t know.

  29

  Staring at the screen, Mike felt a little uneasy, his stomach twitching. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t looked at private information before. It was just that Cash’s texts were private. Mike knew he’d be furious if someone had cloned his phone, but this was for a g
ood cause. At least he thought it was. Mike swallowed and licked his lips, taking a sip of coffee as he sat at Emily’s kitchen table. He reached down underneath the table and stroked Miner’s fur. It was warm and soft against his fingers. They’d gotten back from a walk a half-hour before, and the dog was now collapsed under the table, his head on Mike’s bare feet.

  Frowning, Mike stared at the texts that were popping up on his screen. The cloning program gave him access to every text that went in and out of Cash’s phone, though it didn’t tell him who the numbers belonged to. Following all of the conversations was tricky. Mike knitted his brow, trying to guess who some of the people were that Cash was texting. There seemed to be one conversation with a lead agent, probably someone female by the way Cash talked to her. There were a couple of texts from the FBI’s home office in Baton Rouge, and a couple of personal ones — maybe a girlfriend, something about missing him and wishing they were together. Mike sighed. The whole process of reading Cash’s texts made him feel like nothing more than a peeping Tom.

  Halfway down the list, Mike saw what he was looking for. It was the original text where Cash mentioned Emily. “Track these plates for me?” The plates were Emily’s. Mike recognized them from seeing the truck in the driveway as many times as he had.

  The timestamp on the next text came back just a few minutes later, “Emily Tizzano of Chicago. FYI, she’s a former Chicago police detective. Why are you asking?”

  Cash hadn’t bothered to reply.

  Mike made his way through a few more texts before he heard a knock on the door. Miner jumped up, growling. As Mike walked to the door, his phone beeped, “I’m here,” Flynn wrote.

  Putting his hand on the doorknob, Mike looked down at Miner, “It’s okay, boy. It’s just Uncle Flynn.”

  Flynn and Mike had been spending a lot of time at Emily’s house while she was gone, trying to piece together any other information they could find about the case. They’d come up short. There were plenty of news reports about what happened in Tifton, but little detail other than the fact that the bodies had been dismembered. “Any news?” Flynn said, dropping his backpack on the floor and stopping for a second to kneel and scratch Miner behind his ears after shutting the door.

  “I was just going through some of Agent Strickland’s texts,” Mike said, slumping back down into the chair in front of his laptop.

  “Anything interesting?” Flynn said, sitting down next to him.

  “I was just getting to that part, I think.” Mike turned his computer towards Flynn so they could both look at the screen together. Mike pointed, “See here? That’s where Cash makes the initial request to run Emily’s plates. I want to look down further and see when he requested the background check.”

  Flynn nodded, “Yeah, my buddy said the request came in not too long after the FBI got to Tifton.”

  Mike frowned and rubbed his eyes. It seemed like it was taking a long time to get the background check on Emily back to Cash. That could be a good thing or a bad thing. He didn’t know which. Unless, of course, Agent Strickland already had it, and they just didn’t know.

  Scrolling down, Mike found the rest of the thread where Cash was talking to the person who ran the plates, “Chicago police detective? What’s she doing in Tifton?”

  Whoever Cash was texting with, replied, “I have no idea. Maybe family?”

  “She told me she was a criminal justice student. Get me a full package on her, will you?”

  Mike looked At Flynn, “Think he’s suspicious?”

  “Might be almost as suspicious as you, Mike,” Flynn said, smiling. “Keep looking. There has to be something on the background check.”

  Mike scrolled down the page, squinting, trying to find where the rest of the information might be. One of the problems with the software used for the cloning program was that it pulled up all the texts chronologically, without organizing them by phone number. That meant a lot of digging. Another two pages of texts down, there was another text from the same person who ran the plates for Cash, “I requested the background check on the person of interest you mentioned,” the text read. “You should have that later on.”

  Agent Strickland replied, “Okay. Hurry it up, will you?”

  Mike’s heart started beating faster in his chest. By the time stamp on the text he was reading, Agent Strickland should already have the background check. The question was, what did it include? How much of Emily’s life would be exposed? Mike got up and walked over to the sink, pouring out the coffee from his cup, rinsing it and putting it in the dishwasher. The least he could do for Emily would be to keep her house nice for when she came back... if she came back. Mike sighed, thinking about the situation. No one had ever positively identified Emily on a case before. At the same time, Emily had never jumped headlong into an investigation with as much active law enforcement on it as this one. “It’s our fault if she gets caught, Flynn. We’re the ones who told her to take the case.” Mike watched for a second as the color drained from his friend’s face.

  “Then we better get her all the information we can so she can protect herself and come home,” Flynn said, reaching for his laptop.

  30

  Driving Bradley’s Jeep made Emily feel instantly more comfortable. He was right, no one would suspect that the disgraced cop from Chicago had switched cars. The only people interested in taking a look at her might be someone who had a fascination with vintage Jeeps. In Tifton, she wasn’t sure how many people that might be.

  After leaving Bradley’s house, Emily decided to take a cruise by the Cooper’s. At least in the Jeep, she thought she’d have a shot of not being spotted by Cash or any of his FBI crew. If she was careful with her body language, she wouldn’t look like anything more than someone passing by. As she got closer, Emily swallowed, feeling the worn spots on the steering wheel where drivers before her had gripped it. The windows were down, the hot afternoon air blowing through the Jeep. With her baseball hat and sunglasses on, Emily thought she hardly looked like the woman that Cash had run into just a few days before.

  Turning down the street, Emily gripped the wheel a little harder. As she rounded the curve before the Cooper’s house, she leaned to her left a little, peering forward, wondering how many FBI-owned SUVs there might be parked on the street. As the house came into view, she realized there were none. Not one. Emily chewed her lip and then pulled to the side of the road, stopping the Jeep. Where had they gone? Her heart beat a little faster. Was it possible they had a lead they were chasing, something Emily didn’t know about? Excitement and fear surged through her. If the FBI had found something, then maybe they were getting close to solving the case. In her mind, it didn’t really matter who solved it, just that it got solved and she got home safe.

  Emily checked her rearview mirror and saw movement from the house. A man and a woman pulled down the driveway and drove right past her. Emily caught a glimpse of Keira and Randy Cooper as they drove by, the woman dabbing at her eyes as she passed, her long blonde ponytail, a match for Lexi’s, pulled up behind her head, her husband gripping the wheel with both hands. Where they were going, Emily didn’t know. She started the Jeep and pulled out slowly behind them, keeping her distance. The last thing she wanted was for them to be spooked by a strange Jeep tailing them.

  The road widened as Emily followed them. It seemed the Coopers were headed into town. The fact they left the house was strange, Emily thought. She furrowed her brow, wondering where they were going. If the FBI had an actual lead Emily thought Randy and Keira would’ve stayed home, waiting for news. But maybe not. Now in the center of town, the Coopers pulled into the only drugstore Emily had seen since she arrived, the Sunrise Pharmacy, the same one where Sierra Day worked.

  Emily was two cars behind Randy and Keira. She pulled into the pharmacy just in time to see them walk into the store. Emily threw the Jeep into park, selecting a spot on the other side from the Coopers. She walked quickly towards the door, hoping they were still inside, her hands clammy even in the
heat.

  The Sunrise Pharmacy looked the same as the drugstores Emily frequented in Chicago — bright lights, rows and rows of everything from makeup to cleaning supplies to milk — flanked by a long pharmacy counter in the back. Though the building on the outside looked old, Emily could tell someone had put a lot of money into rehabbing it.

  Taking off her sunglasses, Emily walked down an aisle with notebooks and pencils and circled back towards the pharmacy. Though she didn’t know why the Coopers had gone in, it made sense to search the building from back to front. Emily swallowed again, realizing she didn’t have much of a plan.

  At the pharmacy counter, Emily caught a glimpse of the Coopers. Sierra was talking to them, wearing the white lab coat of a pharmacist, their voices just above a murmur. Emily stayed by the magazine rack nearby, trying to listen, pretending to stare at an issue of a decorating magazine. “This might make you a little bit sleepy, but you probably need some sleep. It will help you to think clearer when you wake up. Just call me if you have any questions, okay?” Emily heard the creak of the half door that blocked the pharmacy from the customers as it opened. Sierra reached for Keira. “I’m so sorry for what you’re going through,” Sierra said, hugging the grieving woman as she handed her the prescription.

  “I just can’t believe Lexi’s gone,” Keira said, looking down.

  “And they haven’t given you any information at all? The FBI hasn’t made any progress?”

  Randy shook his head, “Nothing. They seem to think that someone jimmied her window open in the middle of the night and pulled her out, but we didn’t hear anything. Nothing at all!”

  “And that’s the only information they’ve been able to give you? There’s been no ransom demand, nothing?” Sierra said.