by Blake Pierce
Kate acted without thinking. She charged at the door, slamming her entire weight into it. It caught Insbrook off guard and sent him sprawling back. His feet tangled over Anna Forester’s body and he barely caught himself on the edge of the dryer. A pile of folded clothes went toppling over into the floor. In the back of her mind, Kate heard herself laughing maniacally. So far, this was easily the clumsiest fight she had ever been in.
He pushed himself off of the dryer and launched himself at her. Kate fired off a round but it was at the same moment she slammed into her. The bullet tore into the wall just a foot or so behind Insbrook’s head. It was not a shoulder thrown into her chest or even a punch or kick. Their bodies simply slammed together. He felt as if he easily had fifty or more pounds on her, and the result was nasty. Kate’s forehead dinged off of the killer’s chin and his knee slammed into her hip. They fell in a heap, the back of Kate’s head striking the door frame of the laundry room. White sparks rocketed across her field of vision as something like dull electricity seemed to sweep across her head. She was dimly aware that somewhere in the melee, she had dropped her gun.
She was momentarily so blindsided and disoriented that she was barely aware that Insbrook kept going. He plowed through her and continued on. The only thing that brought Kate out of her stupor was the sound of another gunshot. There was a brief yelp of pain and then the sound of something thudding hard against the floor.
Kate scrambled to her hands and knees, fully expecting to see Darby Insbrook on the tile floor of the mudroom with DeMarco holding her Glock. Instead, the killer had DeMarco pinned to the wall—an elbow in her chest as he started to wrap a piece of piano wire around her neck with the other hand.
Kate tried getting to her feet, using the doorframe to help. The white sparks were still streaking across her line of vision and her knees felt incredibly shaky. Still, she hobbled forward and brought a knee up hard into Insbrook’s side, aiming for his ribs. She nearly fell again, almost losing her balance and only able to stay on her feet by throwing her arms around Insbrook’s neck. She did her best to maneuver it into a head lock but she was too weakened from the earlier blow. The important thing, though, was that Insbrook was off of DeMarco, trying to wriggle out of Kate’s grasp.
He dropped to his knees slowly, reached back, and grabbed a handful of Kate’s hair. She knew what was coming next and did her best to brace her feet against the mudroom wall to stop it. The killer hunched over in a kneeling U-posture, pulled her hair hard, and sent her sailing over his shoulder. Kate landed hard on her back and slid across the mudroom floor, into the kitchen. The breath went sailing out of her and the pain in her back caused her to curl into the fetal position. If she could have drawn in a breath, she would have let out a scream.
Insbrook came at her again, the piano wire still in his hand. She saw rage in his eyes, a dark glittering star that had no core. There was animalistic hatred there, an urge to hurt and maim and kill.
Kate saw the litter of silverware on the floor from the apparent struggle between Anna Forester and Darby Insbrook before she and DeMarco had arrived. She reached for a steak knife, her back screaming in pain as she did so. Even as she grasped for it, she knew she would be too late anyway.
The killer dove for her, the piano wire stretched out tightly between his hands. She had a moment to think of Karen Hopkins and how the wire had actually cut into her skin. She wondered if he could actually saw through her neck if he tried.
She raised the knife up and for the briefest of moments, there was hesitation. This was followed by what sounded like a strange snapping noise, organic and metallic sounding all at once. Insbrook howled—not a sound of pain, but of rage. Kate realized that when she had drawn the knife up, she had snapped the piano wire Insbrook had been wielding. She had snapped it right in half.
From the floor, Insbrook threw a hard elbow out toward her. It missed, but he followed with a lazy kick. This one caught her in the shin and though it did not hurt all that bad, she knew it was going to leave one hell of a bruise.
He came at her again and Kate managed to get to her knees before he could attack. She readied the knife, knowing that it was either him or her. If she did not cut him where it mattered, he might very well kill her.
But just before he struck her, there were two loud popping noises, a wet splash against Kate’s chest, and then an unexpected right-handed veer to Insbrook’s approach. He tottered hard to the right and collapsed onto the kitchen floor.
There was a hole in his forehead and another just below his neck. Both were dribbling out blood, the one beneath his neck pouring it out onto the floor. Kate looked behind where the killer had been coming from and saw DeMarco. She was still in her shooter’s stance, her face like granite and her knuckles white as they gripped the Glock.
It occurred to Kate in that moment, as she saw the absolute shock and hatred on her partner’s face, that DeMarco had not even tried to shoot to wound. Either of the shots could have been fatal, much less both.
“DeMarco…at ease. Okay?”
DeMarco only blinked once. Several spooky moments passed before DeMarco got to her feet. Kate did the same, leaning back against the kitchen bar as she realized she was still quite dizzy. Slowly, she walked over to DeMarco just as DeMarco seemed to slowly start to come around. They both looked back into the laundry room. Anna Forester was lying on the floor. As Kate walked slowly into the room, she prayed the woman was still alive.
Anna’s eyes were open, staring up at the ceiling. At first Kate feared the woman was dead, but then she blinked. And then she started to cry.
Kate tried to kneel on the floor with her but ended up partially collapsing instead. She took the woman’s hand in her own and did her best to remain rational.
“You’re okay now,” Kate said. “You’re okay.”
DeMarco watched on as she pulled her phone out and placed a call to Bannerman. Even as she spoke to him, filling him in on what happened, it was obvious that she was doing everything she could to hold back tears—and to not turn around to face the death she had just doled out.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
As the evening rolled on, Kate noticed that Sheriff Bannerman looked like he was in shock. He worked well and managed to keep his head above the water, but Kate knew the look on his face very well. She was pretty sure that when he got home that night, he was going to think long and hard about the years he had served as a sheriff and what his retirement might look like.
Kate did not get a chance to really speak to him until the ambulance had left the Forester house with Anna inside. As far as they could tell from first glance, she was going to have some massive bruising around her neck and she was in a serious state of shock. But all in all, Anna Forester was going to turn out okay.
When the ambulance left and the last of the patrol cars left behind it, Bannerman went to the porch swing on the Foresters’ porch and sat down with a heavy sound that was part grunt and part sigh.
“You okay?” Kate asked.
“I will be. What about you? You got banged up pretty good. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that bruise on the side of your head.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“I’ll make her see a doctor,” DeMarco said from the place where she was sitting on the stairs.
“So…tell me about this piano I’m going to have to deal with,” Bannerman said.
“You won’t have to deal with it,” DeMarco said. “We spoke with our supervisor and he’s sending a special forensics team to look at it. There are hairs on those strings that could be a year or so old. And not from this area.”
“So what does that mean? That he’s done this before?”
“It looks that way,” Kate said, still unable to believe it. “But we won’t know for certain until the names we found in his address book are cross-examined with unexplained murders or disappearances over the last few years. And then we’ll have to wait on the forensics details from those hair samples.”
“But…?”
“But it feels like we just stopped a serial killer,” DeMarco said.
Bannerman looked at Kate for some sort of confirmation and she nodded. He said nothing for a while and then got to his feet, though it was clear he was more than done for that day.
“Thank you, ladies, for all you’ve done. I guess I’ll call a press conference of my own and let the locals know that the murders have come to a stop and the suspect has been killed.” He looked at Kate and gave a knowing grin. “You sure you don’t want to stick around for that?”
“Oh, I’m certain. But thanks anyway.”
The three of them remained on the porch for a while longer. Kate did her best to hide the fact that her head was still reeling and she felt slightly sick to her stomach. She figured she’d have to get okayed by a doctor to fly back out to Virginia. She was all but certain she had a concussion.
But it had been worth it because it would be much easier to live the rest of her life constantly seeing the number twenty-three in her mind instead of twenty-four.
***
Because she did indeed have a concussion, Kate was unable to make the return trip back east for another twenty hours. She skipped going back home right away because she knew there would be her own drama to wrap up there—not only with Melissa, but with Alan as well. She flew direct from O’Hare to Dulles exactly twenty-one hours after saving Anne Forester’s life.
She arrived back in DC with an email waiting for her. It was not from Duran’s personal assistant, but from Duran himself. He would be in his office, waiting for her arrival. He also gave her a heads-up that the section chief may be in attendance.
Kate knew she should be worried but as she watched DC’s early night traffic roll by through the windows of her cab, she felt a certain sense of peace to the whole thing. Yes, she knew it was not normal for Duran to hold meetings with agents at 8:30 at night. And she also knew that if the section chief—a wiry grunt of a man named Sam Hilton—was going to be in attendance, the meeting would likely have a very bad outcome.
It wasn’t until she reached FBI headquarters that she realized why she wasn’t stressed out over the meeting. Perhaps it was the high of taking out Darby Insbrook or just because she was tired, but she was starting to fully understand how blessed she was. She had been graced with a second chapter of a career she had loved and she had a daughter who loved her, despite her any flaws and stubborn tendencies. And, if she played her cards right, she even still had a salvageable relationship with a man who seemed to be very much in love with her despite her insistence on keeping him at arm’s length.
In other words, no matter how the meeting turned out, she still had an amazing life waiting for her no matter the turns.
She took the elevator to the second floor after checking in with the after-hours guard. When the elevator dinged and the doors slid open, she walked to Duran’s office with confidence in her step. It did waver a bit when she found the door already open, as if he was not only expecting her but wanted her to know that they were waiting specifically for her.
She entered the room and saw that Section Chief Hilton was indeed there. She’d only met with the man a handful of times during the course of her career and they had a good working relationship. Now, though, as he looked up from the small conference room table in the back of Duran’s office, he gazed at her as if he was inspecting a bothersome insect that had been buzzing around his head.
Duran also sat at the table with him, but he got to his feet when Kate entered the room. It was an awkward sort of greeting that Duran seemed to regret instantly. He recovered as best as he could by simply pointing to one of the available chairs.
“Have a seat, Agent Wise,” he said.
She did as she was asked, nodding to the section chief as she did so. “Section Chief Hilton, it’s nice to see you.”
“You as well. I do wish it was under better circumstances, though.”
“What are the circumstances?” Kate asked.
Duran leaned forward a bit, as if to make sure he was not forgotten. “Well, once again we find ourselves torn over how to proceed with using you. As you remember, it was supposed to be only on rare occasions but this latest case—this discovery of Insbrook at work outside of Chicago—there’s no way we’re going to be able to ignore it. The media is going to latch on to it.”
“Thanks in part,” Hilton added, “to the little stunt you pulled at the press conference.”
“I don’t follow,” Kate said.
Duran and Hilton shared an uncomfortable glance, but Duran eventually answered her. “The cross-checking of names is done. Each one of the names in the address book you found that had been crossed out…they’re all homicides. Two were speculated to have been suicides but there was never enough evidence. They had all been strangled, but only several of the more recent ones had been strangled with what does now appear to have been piano wire. And while there have not been conclusive tests run on all of the hairs, there have been enough positive matches to these deceased women to be able to finish connecting the dots.”
“Twenty-three, right?” she asked, the word seeming much larger than it actually was.
“Yes. If we count the three victims in Frankfield, there were twenty-three victims. And you stopped him. Twenty murders before he stepped foot in Frankfield and he somehow went unnoticed. Chief Hilton and I will be putting together a task force tomorrow to figure out how the hell he wasn’t linked to these other twenty murders—murders that span back four years.”
“So yes,” Hilton said, “we acknowledge that you and Agent DeMarco took down a man that had killed twenty-three women. And that is the part the media is going to see and no doubt be talking about. But what they won’t see or hear is how you willfully disobeyed your director’s orders and essentially went rogue. Would you care to tell us why you thought you could just go about and do as you pleased?”
“I knew we were getting close,” she said. “If I had left, it would have altered the progress of the case.”
“You feel that highly about yourself?” Hilton asked.
“No, sir. But I have worked more than one hundred cases involving killers or suspected killers. I know enough about the structure of a case to know that once progress towards a solution begins, changing the personnel almost always slows the progress. Had we still been at square one with no leads at all, I would not have made that call.”
“It wasn’t your call to make, Kate,” Duran said. He then looked to Hilton with a dash of embarrassment, realizing he had used her first name, showing a bit of favoritism and familiarity.
“Here’s where we’re at,” Hilton said. “Director Duran and I have been going back and forth on it all day. Given the nature of your current agreement with the bureau, it would seem the most reasonable thing to do is call out your fault in disobedience and terminate the agreement. About three hours ago, we had come to that agreement. But then we saw that the news has already picked up on how a serial killer was stopped. Anna Forester gave the bit of testimony she has, and Sheriff Bannerman is going on and on about you and DeMarco. Throw in the fact that a few stations and websites are running your interference at that press conference on a loop, and you’re connected to the case and the killer.”
“But DeMarco deserves that credit. She’s the one that took him down.”
“We already spoke with her,” Hilton said. “She insists you saved her life before she was able to shoot Insbrook. She said it was very much a team effort. And quite honestly, she’s smart as hell; she does not want the credit or the recognition for taking out Insbrook. That much media and publicity for an agent so young…it could end up spoiling her career.”
Kate nodded, feeling proud that her partner had made such a smart decision. She then looked to Duran and said: “So you two were in agreement to let me go?”
“Look,” Hilton said. “It would look completely foolish for us to do that right now. We realize that we can’t terminate the current agreement. By this time tomorrow, the m
edia is going to be very interested in you and you’re going to probably have to fight off reporters. The fact that you came out of retirement to work and managed to bring down a serial killer makes the story even hotter. But what we can ask of you is that you take a break for a bit. We will not call for your assistance for several weeks. And when we do, it will likely be for something a bit more subtle.”
“I’ll take the blame for that,” Duran said. “This case came up, there were no leads at all and I thought of you. Despite the sparse agreement we have with you, you remain one of the better agents we have.”
“Thank you.”
“But I must stress this,” Hilton said. “In the future, any reckless disobedience or disrespect to either your director or those above him will be met with consequences. Perhaps even criminal charges. Am I understood, Agent Wise?”
“Yes sir.”
Hilton nodded and got to his feet. “Now…with that out of the way…”
He extended his hand. Kate looked to Duran and only received a smile and a shrug. Kate took the offered hand and shook it.
“Damned good work, Agent Wise. You and Agent DeMarco make an incredible team.”
“We really do. And I appreciate it, sir.”
She paused a beat, giving them one more chance to say any last words that were on their mind. There was still tension in the air, weighed by unspoken words. After a few more seconds, Kate took her leave. She supposed there was always meant to be some sort of tension among her and Duran in this new agreement she’d signed up for. But now that Section Chief Hilton was also making himself more prominently involved, it opened up a whole new level of awareness for her.
But that was okay. She’d be fifty-six in a few weeks. How long did she really think she could keep up with this pace anyway?
She smiled as she stepped back onto the elevators, fully prepared to just get a nice hotel room somewhere in the city and sleep in tomorrow before heading back home.
