The man’s expression told Joshua that he could see where this was going but had no reasonable explanation for why he would refuse the information. He shuffled his feet again, which Joshua was starting to identify as his “tell”.
“Yeah. We got a few buildings out by the fields.”
“And I’m guessing that they all have cellars?” Joshua added. “This is part of tornado alley, right?”
Mr. Longmore grunted, which Joshua took to be assent. The cellar of a storage facility on a farm would be the perfect place to hold a victim. Ideal for killing them. Even adequate for some dismemberment. Preston had his pick of a very large litter, from what Joshua could tell.
“Where are they?” Reggie pressed.
The farmer thrust his jaw out, making it clear that he had no desire to be helpful right now. Joshua watched as Reggie’s eyebrow lifted. She knew what was going on. The girl was sharp.
“It’s information that we’ll get one way or another, Mr. Longmore. We have more than enough to get whatever warrants we need. But you need to know that there is a member of our team whose life is in danger. Helping us will go a long way toward earning some goodwill for your son.”
As Mr. Longmore moved out toward the street to point out the directions to Reggie, Joshua hung back, placing himself as close to the wife as he could without being obvious about it. She’d been staring at him since they’d started talking about Preston. Furtive looks that ended as soon as he realized they were there. She wanted to talk to him but was afraid.
Sure enough, as Joshua got closer to where she was standing up on the porch, Preston’s mother came down to the railing and rested her arms against it. To anyone watching, it might have appeared to be nothing. But to Joshua it was an invitation.
“You’re worried about your son,” he said, without looking at her or raising his voice.
She nodded, a tear sliding down her cheek. Her gaze went to her husband, who was gesturing off in the direction of what Joshua guessed were the fields.
“I love my boy,” she said.
“But there are things that just don’t fit and you’re afraid of what he’s done… or might do.”
Another nod. “He was always a strange boy. Wanted to be off by himself most of the time. Loved his biology classes. Dissecting frogs and whatnot. Didn’t have any friends to speak of.”
Joshua waited for a moment, until it was clear she wouldn’t say more without prompting. “Have you seen him?”
The tears flowed faster as she nodded her head a third time. “He stopped by a few hours ago. Told us he was going back in to work the graveyard. But that’s not the direction he went.”
“He went off to the fields?”
She didn’t directly respond to the question. “He’ll leave. Sometimes for days at a time. Says he’s busy working at the station or out with friends, but when I call for him at work, he’s not there. And he don’t have no friends.” Another quick sob and she straightened herself back up.
“Mrs. Longmore, I—”
“I see what’s real. He had a tough childhood,” she said, looking off in the direction of Preston’s father.
That fit with Joshua’s instinct about abuse. He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off with her next words.
“Keep my boy safe if you can. But you do what you got to do.” She moved off toward the front door of the house, but then turned back. “If something happens out there, don’t come back looking for forgiveness from me. Might be he’s broken, but he’s also my son. And if you hurt him and show your face where I can see it, I’ll kill you.”
Joshua watched as the woman exited back into the house. In spite of himself, he found that he liked this mother of a serial killer.
He marched off toward the taxi, leaving Mrs. Longmore to her grief. He didn’t expect to see her ever again.
* * *
“This will work. This is going to work. It has to.”
Had listened as Preston ranted to himself. The ravings had gotten more and more intense the longer they’d spent together.
It wasn’t like it was Had’s fault. Preston was doing everything he could to scare him, and while some of it had been downright uncomfortable, Had would be lying if he said he’d been scared. Maybe it would be smarter to let Preston think he was succeeding, but that could just get him killed faster.
“Preston, buddy, why are you doing this?”
The attendant stopped what he was doing and glared at Had. “You need to understand what it is to be helpless and afraid.”
“But why? Where does this—?”
“Because you had it good!” he yelled, losing his cool for a moment. Preston took a moment and composed himself. “You’re so nice. Talking to everyone you meet, sharing your stories, making them like you. You think the best of everyone. It’s time we changed all of that.”
A container of some sort was placed over Had’s head, and he could feel the writhing and wriggling of what felt like hundreds of tiny legs. They brushed up against his cheeks, tickled the hair in his nose, crawled over his eyelids and burrowed into his hair. It was like the entire surface of his head was twitching. A sound that was somewhere between a hiss and a rattle echoed through the container, amplified by the small space.
“Those are Madagascar hissing cockroaches,” Preston spoke from somewhere outside the box. “One hundred and fifty of them, all looking for a place where they can lay their eggs.”
Well, the whole thing sounded pretty gross. But Had was pretty sure that the part about the eggs was a lie. And it was no worse than the time his Mama had sat him down on top of a fire-ant colony after she’d found him scorching them with a magnifying glass, laughing at the little bugs as they burst into flame.
You’re bigger’n them, it’s downright mean and it just ain’t fair. So, we’re gonna even up the playin’ field for a minute or two, she’d said, even as all the ants bit him at once. He’d spent the next few hours spreading calamine lotion over all the bumps he’d ended up with.
At least these bugs didn’t bite.
Had wasn’t positive what reaction Preston was looking for, but it was clear that he hadn’t given it yet. And this time was no different.
The container was ripped off of his head, pulling some of his hair along with it. Once again, Preston was muttering under his breath.
“How could he not be afraid of cockroaches? Everyone’s afraid of cockroaches. Maybe I should have gone with spiders…” He moved off, the sound of the hissing from the cockroaches echoing in the large space.
“Preston, what happened to you? What made you like this?”
All of the sudden, Preston was back at his side, his face inches from Had’s. Wow. That had been a little startling. Maybe not scary, but it was getting closer.
“You have no idea what it’s like. To live with someone who hates you just for being there. He would force me to go get honey from the bees without a net.” He stopped for a moment. “Maybe that would work…” He wandered off again.
There were some deep issues there. Had understood fear. He’d been through it way too many times to count. But at least his mama had always been doing it for his own good. Sounded like Preston’s dad didn’t have the same altruistic motivations.
The problem was, Preston had tried so many ways to terrify Had, and not a single one had taken. It was getting pretty pathetic.
He’d somehow managed to mimic thunder and lightning… the lightning had been pretty cool. Next had been the snakes. Then he’d taken Had, bound hand and foot, up to the top of the building and leaned him over the edge. It was night, so all he’d been able to see were some lights in the distance and feel the wind in his face. Pretty nice, actually. There had even been an attempt to scare him with clown dolls all lined up around Had’s chair, grinning at him.
That had been the creepiest thing yet, but even that was nothing compared with the time that Had broke his grandma’s favorite porcelain doll. Mama had him shut up in a closet filled with the glassy-eyed thi
ngs. Had woke to nightmares for the next three weeks straight. Now if Preston had brought in some of those…
A glow blossomed from the end of the penlight Preston was using. He grabbed Had by the arm and frog-marched him over to a metal box. Looked to be a safe used to lock up tools or something. Preston opened up the door and, without warning, threw Had inside the container, slamming the door on him.
Looked like small, confined spaces were next on the list.
Had squirmed around until he found a comfortable position. He then closed his eyes and prepared to take a nap.
As he drifted off to sleep, Had breathed a prayer of gratitude for a mother who had prepared him for this kind of psychological torture.
At the time, she had probably thought she was preparing her boy for life. There was no way she could have known she was helping him to be able to keep a serial killer distracted until help came.
Well, it was Mama, so maybe she had known. Had wouldn’t put it past her.
CHAPTER 23
Sariah looked over the group gathered in front of the biggest of the buildings. There were a total of six cops in addition to Reggie, which brought the total number of law enforcement to a whopping ten. And she had no idea what to do with any of them.
There were three structures that needed to be searched, and with no idea of how long Had would be held before he was dismembered, every second counted. But she couldn’t move. She could barely speak.
She stood there, staring at the officers as they started to shift from one foot to another. They were getting uncomfortable, and yet Sariah remained stationary.
Finally Joshua stepped in. “Okay, Chance and Jensen, you’re with Agent Cooper in this building. Rogers and Marco, you’re with me, over there. And the last three are going with Reggie, to that last one.” He pointed to the structures that dotted the area, each one at least a couple of hundred yards from the other.
It didn’t sit well with her to split up the group this way, but the decision had been made by someone else. She understood. Speed was vital. Joshua didn’t want Preston to have enough advance warning to be able to do something to Had if the killer had somehow spotted their arrival.
Her cell phone rang. It was Had’s mother. Sariah looked down at her phone blankly. Joshua stepped forward and answered the call, putting it on speaker.
“Joshua Wright.”
“What’s happening? Where’s Agent Cooper? No, screw that. Where’s my boy?” Ms. Hadderly demanded. There was a hum in the background, like the sound of a car at high speeds.
“We’re looking for him now,” he answered, clearly trying to keep her patient. But Sariah understood. If it were her child that had been kidnapped by a homicidal maniac, she would probably have gone ballistic by now.
“What… can you… there’s no… I’m coming…” Ms. Hadderly’s voice was cutting in and out. And then the call dropped completely. Sariah looked down at her phone in Joshua’s hand. One bar, then no bars, then a flicker of a bar. Joshua pulled his own out of his pocket.
“I have no cell reception out here,” Joshua muttered, looking down at his cell. “Anyone else?”
Everyone pulled out their cells, checking their bars and shaking their heads. Marco’s eyes lit up for a moment, but then he shook his head. It looked like no one had any connection, or if they had it, it was only for moments at a time.
“Okay, we’ll just have to rely on radios,” he said, as he checked to make sure every one of the local cops had one. “Make sure you call in if there’s anything strange.” He nodded toward the buildings. “All right. Let’s this thing going. Be careful, everyone.”
Each of the groups headed toward their respective assignments, every head swiveling from left to right, looking for any kind of movement or oddity that might denote the presence of a killer. Sariah moved as if she were in a dream, pulling out her weapon and her flashlight as she moved off in the direction of the entrance.
The building loomed above her, a dark and menacing presence in the night. The doorway was twice as tall and half again as wide as what she was used to, more than likely made to accommodate farm machinery. It made the entry seem like a maw that was gaping wide to swallow them up.
She moved through into the absence of light, trying not to see phantoms behind every odd-shaped protuberance inside. Tractors and combines blended in with other, less identifiable machinery to create a nightmare landscape from which death could leap, unseen and uncaring, to end the lives of those around her.
She watched Officers Chance and Jensen as they started to move away from her. She waved at them to stay close. They needed to find the access to the cellar, which was going to be the most likely area in which to find Preston, but she needed their presence around her. She wasn’t capable. She’d proven that again and again. They might be.
But as she watched the policemen drift into the darkness just ahead of her, she couldn’t help but feel that they were all headed into the depths of some hell from which none of them might return.
* * *
The open area of the warehouse was heavy with the scent of the hay that was present everywhere in huge rectangular bales, much larger than any bales Joshua had ever seen before. They were stacked up high on every side. He wove his way past another monolith of stacked golden straw, doing what he could to keep from sneezing.
No way to clear all the corners in this place. There were corners everywhere. So many nooks and crannies that could hold so many dangers. But there was something here. Some sense of presence that Joshua couldn’t quantify but had felt so many times before, years ago, in another lifetime.
A lifetime that had included family, friends, work, even some play. It had been a good life, much as he didn’t like to remember it that way. He didn’t like to remember it at all. Hard to see past the concrete wall that had been erected by so much heartbreak. So much destruction. So much death.
Officer Marco cleared his throat, which quickly turned into a hacking cough. “Damn hay fever. This is the worst.” He coughed again, hawking up mucus, which he then spat to the side. “I’m going to go check out the other side of this space.”
“Yeah, and I’ll go in the opposite direction. Split up, make better time,” Rogers affirmed.
“Not sure that’s a good idea, guys,” Joshua answered. “It’s way too easy for us to get separated in here.”
Marco snorted, which caused him to cough again, followed by a sneeze. After a second he got it back together.
“What? We’re looking for one guy who doesn’t even know we’re on our way. I think the three of us can handle it. We’ll just yell if we run into any problems.”
“Whatever,” Joshua answered. It didn’t feel right to split up, but it wasn’t like he was really in charge of this group. He was just a consultant, after all. And to keep these cops from doing what they felt was their job on a hunch just felt like too much work.
“If one of us finds a way up or down, we’ll whistle, okay? Or I could caw like a crow.” Rogers said with a grin.
“Whatever floats your boat.”
And the two cops split off, going in the opposite direction from each other. Joshua was left alone, fighting down a growing sense of apprehension. He’d been given a gun for this outing, but it wasn’t the extension of his arm that his own weapon had been, back when he’d been with the BAU. It felt like a mockery, so he shoved it back into the holster that was strapped around his shoulder.
The feeling was coming from something real. He dug a little deeper, looking for the source. Was it really as simple as the fact that he didn’t want to be alone in the dark?
No.
Preston was a trap setter. He’d proved that back in Cedar Rapids. And he had to know that by capturing Had, they would be on his trail eventually. The killer might be many things, but he wasn’t stupid. They had misjudged him on that level more than once.
This guy would be prepared.
Which meant that Joshua had just sent two local and very inexperienced cops their
separate ways to deal with threats they had never seen before.
Shit.
“Marco! Rogers! Come back!” Joshua called out, trying to stay as quiet as he could while still making himself heard. No sound came back but the muffled silence of a warehouse full of hay.
There was a metallic snick, followed by what sounded like a wet gurgle. It was coming from the direction that Marco had gone.
Joshua swore, running as fast as he could in that direction. He was going fast enough that he almost tripped over an obstacle that was in his path. A soft, yielding surface gave against the pressure of his foot, causing him to whip his flashlight down to shine directly into Marco’s face. But it was what was just below that face that was the problem.
His throat had been slit to the point that the head was nearly severed from the spine, and blood was still pouring from the wound, which looked like nothing more than a lipless second mouth gaping where his Adam’s apple should be.
Shining the light close to the floor, Joshua spotted a trip wire. It was just inches above the floor, but appeared to have been triggered by Marco.
Above, there was what looked to be a broken blade off of a combine that had been attached to a rope and pulley system. The ropes were probably there to help move the huge bales of hay. When Marks tripped the wire, it had released the blade, where it sliced through the cop’s throat like it was a hunk of Havarti cheese.
This killer had stayed a step ahead of them the entire time. He lulled them into a false sense of security, then set a bomb to take out their team. Kidnapping Had to bring them here, where he was clearly prepared for them arriving.
That meant the other teams were in danger as well.
A change in air pressure or some extra sense warned Joshua. He leapt to the side just as one of the huge bales of hay fell from overhead. As it fell, its outer edge caught him in the ribcage just below his left arm. Luckily, the momentum from his jump pushed him away from the deadly weight of the falling hay. It landed right where he had been standing, crushing Marco’s body beneath its weight.
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