Welcome back, Joshua. It’s been a long time.
* * *
Had wasn’t sure what he should do. After Joshua’s initial reaction, he had shut down. He hadn’t spoken. He hadn’t moved. Even his blinking was slowed down to the point it almost wasn’t happening. And Had didn’t blame him. Not for a moment.
They had placed him in the shade, away from the engraved message. No need to keep that one fresh in his mind. And now, Had and Sariah were mapping out plans for the next few hours and days.
The convention had ended, so more rooms at the hotel had opened up. They’d be able to put Joshua in a room on his own, to let him recuperate. But there were other considerations… things that needed to get done. And having Joshua almost comatose was not on the agenda.
“We need to map out the places each of the body parts was found, see if there’s some kind of link,” Coop was saying.
Had nodded, thinking of the ways in which he could help. But his mind kept going back to the etchings on the surface of that play structure. How would Had react if he’d gone through the same thing? His mind drew a blank. There was no way for him to get even a small part of what must be going on in Joshua’s mind.
“Had. Had. Had.” Agent Cooper’s voice broke through his reverie.
“Sorry. I just—”
“I get it. I feel bad for him, too. But we’ve got to figure out how to handle things without him for the next little while. Anybody’s guess how long he’ll stay like that.”
“Like what?” came a voice from behind them. It was Joshua.
“Joshua, hey… how are you?” Had asked.
“What, that?” Joshua shrugged, pointing back at the message. “It’ll take more than that to keep me from free liquor. Speaking of which… let’s get back to the hotel.”
“Um… all right…” Agent Cooper responded, nonplussed.
“Look, bitching and crying about it isn’t going to help any. Let’s just… get out of here, okay?”
“Okay,” Coop agreed. She seemed almost as troubled by Joshua’s quick recovery as she had been about his reaction. Had felt the same. There was something too glib… too easy… about the way he was brushing off the experience now.
But, regardless, maybe there was something here they could use. “The fact that the killer knew you were back on the job should mean something, right?”
Sariah was nodding, but Joshua cut off the line of reasoning with a slash of his hand. “All it says is that the killer knew I’d be called in on this. And anyone who knew the history of the case could have figured that out.”
Had could see where that might be true, but it still bothered him. Something about this spoke of a more intimate connection. But without any additional clues, it was a moot point. Information. They just needed more information.
He would just have to see what he could do about that.
* * *
Sariah started awake and glanced at the bedside clock. 1:43 am. What the hell had woken her up?
The answer came a moment later, when the knock on her door was repeated. It was an insistent banging, one with purpose. Not the polite knock that Had might make if he needed to talk to her, but wasn’t sure if she was awake.
Joshua.
Grabbing a robe to throw on over her t-shirt and boxers, she moved toward the door. Looking through the peephole, Sariah was surprised to see the figure of a policeman standing there. Was this part of the harassment from earlier, coming back to haunt her in the wee hours of the morning?
Opening up for the officer, she caught sight of another uniformed cop off to the side, propping up a figure who was leaning against the wall, his close-cropped hair and beard identifying him as the former BAU agent.
He was drunk off his ass.
A thought passed through her mind. If eight drinks hadn’t seemed to affect him the night before, how much must he have drunk tonight?
“Agent Cooper?” the officer asked her.
“Yes.”
“We responded to a call for a drunk and disorderly at a nearby bar. When we got there, this man was trying to put everyone in the bar under arrest. He kept raving about severed hands and wood chippers and brain splatter. It was upsetting the patrons.”
“I can only imagine.”
“Yeah. That stuff might fly in D.C., but this is Charleston. We don’t go in for that kind of sick talk.” The cop glanced over at the inert form propped against the wall. “He also tried to attack several of the other patrons, but was drunk enough that he didn’t do any real damage.”
“I see.”
“One more thing. The identification he had on him wasn’t his. It belonged to a…” The officer held up a wallet and pulled out the driver’s license. “Hadderly?”
Shit. “That’s one of the other members of my team. I can get it back to him.” She took the billfold the officer held out to her.
“We started to take him in, but he kept insisting that he was working with the FBI and that you’d vouch for him. I’d heard around the precinct that you guys were here working a case, so…”
“Thank you, Officer. I appreciate you taking the time to help figure this out.”
The officer smiled at her. “No problem, ma’am.”
“But there is a problem.”
“Ma’am?”
“I have no idea who this man is.”
The officer goggled at her. “But—”
“Sorry for your troubles, but I think you’re just going to have to take him in.” Sariah gave the man a significant look.
It took a moment, but the policeman caught on. “I see. You want us to throw him in the drunk tank?”
“Yes. I think that would be an excellent idea.” She started to turn around, then had another thought. “Maybe don’t process him. I might recognize him tomorrow morning.”
“Gotcha. Will do, ma’am.” With that, the two cops escorted Joshua down the hall.
Allowing the door to shut behind her, Sariah pulled her robe off and climbed back into bed. Their flight didn’t leave tomorrow until around 12. More than enough time to get Joshua back after he slept off his bender in a cell.
She closed her eyes and drifted back off to sleep in seconds.
CHAPTER 9
Had was tired. Oh, so very, very tired.
But he was done. He’d finished it. It had taken three of those five hour energy drinks to make it through the night, but Had was proud of what he’d accomplished.
And who the hell managed to make it through five hours on one of those little thingies? They should call them five-hour-energy-for-people-who-are-already-insomniacs. False advertising at its worst.
Regardless, all of the through-the-night coding had been worth it. Sure, he was a little punch-drunk now, but he was young. He could take it.
The results of his work meant they could hit the ground running as soon as they got back to Quantico. There would be no futzing around. Had now was in possession of all of the collated data they needed to start bringing in suspects.
As he was gulping down the last of his energy drinks, there was a knock on the door. Room service. Perfect. He was starving.
Turned out it wasn’t room service. It was Coop, looking focused and determined. Come to think of it, that’s how she looked a majority of the time, so this morning wasn’t all that different.
“We need to get down to the station to pick up Joshua.”
Okay, that wasn’t what Had was expecting to hear. “What?”
“He snuck out last night after we got here. Drank half the alcohol in the county from all accounts… and ended up in the drunk tank.” There was a slight hiccup in her speech right before she mentioned the drunk tank. Almost like she was about to say something else but changed her mind.
“Aw, man. I’m sorry, Coop,” Had apologized. “I should’ve been watching out for him”
“How could you have? You were busy sleeping.”
“Well, actually…” Had ushered Agent Cooper into the room.
Sh
e took in the pristine condition of the bed and the empty energy drink containers in the blink of an eye. “Had, did you stay up all night?”
He grinned at her. “Yep.”
“Um, Had… Is there a reason you stayed up all night? I thought we’d talked about you getting more sleep.”
“Sure, well, yeah… but check this out.” Had pulled his laptop toward him and called up the program that he’d named Load and Lockup. Punching a few keys, Had displayed a map of the U.S. with dots showing the location of the body parts they’d found to date. The old ones from 13 years earlier were in yellow, the new ones in red.
“What did you do here?” Coop asked.
“I wrote a program!” he answered, jazzed to show her all the features of his new creation. He started to cross-reference the transportation data when Coop stopped him.
“You know there’s already a program that we use for this, right?”
Had felt his excitement deflate like a water balloon into which someone had poked a pin. The elation he had felt drained away with excruciating slowness, trailing a trickle of his liquefied pride behind it.
“Oh,” was all he could manage, after a long moment of awkward silence.
“Had, I’m so sorry.”
“No, no. It’s my fault. I should’ve checked.” He shook his head in self-mockery. “It makes sense. Of course you already have a program.”
“There was no way you could’ve known,” Coop soothed, patting his shoulder.
“I could’ve asked,” Had fired back. “Or better yet, stopped to think about the fact that the FBI, one of the greatest law enforcement agencies in the world, might have some rocking software. Stupid.”
“No. Not stupid,” she corrected him, her tone more direct this time. “Sweet. Enthusiastic. Forward-thinking. Some of the very reasons I brought you in to begin with.”
“I just… You said we needed to look for the links, so I thought…” He stopped, shook off his disappointment and grinned up at his boss. “Hey, no biggie, right? It’s only a night’s sleep.”
“Right.” Coop looked over his shoulder at the computer. “Besides, now we don’t have to wait until we get back to Quantico.”
Had was sure she was just trying to make him feel better at this point. It was his guess that she had a similar program she could pull up on her laptop in a moment’s notice. But the fact that she was working so hard to make him feel better was something. In fact, it actually did kinda make him feel better.
“Well, since we’re here, let me show you what else I found.” Had brought up the overlay of the transportation routes he’d been studying last night. “I looked at flight plans, commercial and industrial. There were some common links, but it didn’t account for everything we’d found. Some more significant commonalities with train lines, too, but look at this…” He took down everything but the trucking routes. “Bingo.”
“Wow,” Agent Cooper breathed. “There are a bunch of matches. Going all the way back to the earliest cases.”
“Yep. And check this out.” He clicked on a button, which took them to a page that listed the trucking companies that matched the routes they were looking at. Another click brought up all their current employees of record, and cross-referenced any priors.
A dozen names were left, highlighted in red.
“Wait a minute. Did you…?” She leaned in closer, peering at the screen. “This is better than the software we use.”
“Really? You’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”
“Come on, Had. That’s not really my style. This is great work.” She pointed at the names in red. “You may have just saved us two to three days here.” Coop gave him a pat on the shoulder before she headed back out of the room.
Had felt a glow of pride begin at his neck and work its way up to the crown of his head. His software, that he’d coded in one night, was better than the FBI’s. He wasn’t sure he bought it one hundred percent, but man it felt good.
Time to get dressed for the day. He picked up his luggage from the floor and pulled out a blue button-up shirt and a tie. And, let’s see… ah, yes. The raw denim jeans. The ones he’d been told made his butt look good. Okay, it had been his mama, but still…
Glancing down at the readout on the screen, he thought through what the next few days would bring. Part of it would be some intense conversations with these men, their names covered in digital red.
This was going to be fun.
* * *
In prison.
Agent Cooper had thrown Joshua in prison.
Okay, she hadn’t actually thrown him in the cell, but she had denied knowing him to the cops, which amounted to the same thing. She may have thought he was so far gone that he wouldn’t know what she did, but he remembered. It was a hazy, warped view of the incident, but it was also the only thing that made sense, considering all the facts.
He was in a jail cell that smelled of alcohol fumes, stale cigarette smoke and piss, with what appeared to be a transgendered prostitute and a frat boy. The college kid must have thought that he had more in common with Joshua than the hooker, because he’d tried several times to strike up a conversation. But after Joshua implied that the only reason the frat guy was in there because he’d tried to take their other cellmate for a “date”, the young man pretty much left him alone.
There was no way for him to know what time it was. There had been even less sleep last night than normal, so his usual wake up time of four to four-thirty couldn’t be calculated. He didn’t own a watch. There was no window to the outside, so he couldn’t gauge by the brightness of the sun. He was just trapped in here with a woman-slash-man-of-the-evening and a rich kid with an expensive haircut wearing Abercrombie & Fitch.
Asshole.
Joshua glanced down at his hands. They were starting to shake. Not a good sign. Bad things were ahead if he didn’t get out of here and find a drink. Fast.
The outer door to the cell area opened with a clang that went straight through Joshua’s head. Well, straight through couldn’t be accurate. If it had gone straight through, there wouldn’t be those nasty echoes still bouncing around inside. He groaned.
“Good morning, Joshua.” Coop’s voice was too loud, too bright, too fake for him to take sitting down. So he stood.
That was a mistake.
He sat back down again. “Is it? I don’t see that it’s either good or a morning from where I sit.”
“I’m here to get you out.”
“Don’t bother,” Joshua responded. “I’m quite enjoying my stay here at Casa Encarcerado. The beds are soft, the food’s amazing, and the company’s positively scintillating.”
“Oh, they have Johnny Walker Red in there, do they?” She held up a tiny bottle and waved it back and forth from the opposite side of the bars. Dammit. It had to be Johnny Walker. How did she know? Coop continued, “I can see that you’re starting to shake. And is that sweat beading up on your brow?”
He wiped at his forehead, appalled to find that there was indeed a sheen of moisture there. “That’s just my passion for this lovely young thing rearing its ugly head.” Pointing at the prostitute, Joshua winked at Agent Cooper and licked his lips. “Join us, why don’t you?”
At that, Coop dropped the false niceties and went back to her more direct tone of voice. “That’s it. I’m done.”
“Done? Is that so?” Joshua grinned at her, in spite of the answering shot of pain it caused in his skull. “You feel up to taking Humpty head on by yourself?”
“No,” she answered. “Not even a little bit. But I’m not alone. I’ve got Had.”
“Yeah, that’s a good one. He’ll just talk the killer to death.”
Coop let out a long sigh. “You punched him, Joshua. You stole his wallet. He worships you and you piss all over him.”
That stopped Joshua, at least for a second. But he got his voice back a moment later. “He shouldn’t.”
“Oh, I agree,” the agent said. “But you need to tell him yours
elf. In person.”
“Whatever.”
“I came to get you out, you self-obsessed bastard, but if you think I’m going to beg, you’re going to be in there for a very long time.”
She turned on her heel and walked back to the entrance. Joshua held out for all of two steps. It was Johnny Walker Red she was carrying off, after all.
“Wait.”
Pivoting, Coop speared him with a look that could have eaten through stainless steel. Maybe he should’ve just let her walk away.
The ride back to the airport was going to be an interesting one.
* * *
Sariah liked music. Really she did.
But Indian techno? Not so much.
She had been all for just calling the cab company, bringing in the first driver who was available. But Had pulled out his cell and dialed for what’s-his-name before she had a second to contest the decision.
“Shawty’s headin’ back to her crib? My heart be breakin’, yo.” The driver waggled his eyebrows at her in the rear-view mirror. Kebab, was that his name?
“Yeah, sucks to be you,” Joshua muttered, staring out the window. They were the first words he’d spoken since she pulled him out of his cell that morning.
“Y’all have been so bitchin’. Imma text my cuz, let him know how much y’all be ballin’.” He proceeded to whip out his Sidekick, slide out the keyboard and start typing.
To Sariah’s surprise, they managed to stay on the road and even avoid other cars as the cab driver continued to type out his text. How he managed to do that without once lifting up his head to look, she had no idea.
“Oooo, dawg!” The driver… Kashif, that was his name… brightened up all of the sudden, as a new song blared out from the speakers. Sariah couldn’t tell the difference between it and the last one that had been playing. “This my jam, homey!”
Kashif began to gyrate, moving his head, his arms and his hips, all while staying seated and keeping the car from swerving. It was a real talent. The dancing was a mix of the styles Sariah had seen when her roommate back in college had forced her to watch the Bollywood film Bride & Prejudice… and hip-hop.
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