by Blake Pierce
“So you admit that you look guilty?” Laura asked. She was determined not to give in to him. She was rolling with what he was saying, trying to find a way to twist it against him. She needed to, if she was going to get a confession out of him.
“Well, I guess.” Dockhand shrugged. “I’m not, though. Like I said. I’m not… like that anymore. I don’t do things to other people.”
“You don’t?” Laura asked, giving him a look that told him he wasn’t believed. “How convenient that is. And we’re expected to, what? Just go by your word?”
“I know it’s a big ask, but I’m really not that way,” Dockhand said. Even as his tone became pleading, his body language stayed quiet. His shoulders were slumped, his hands loose on the table. He hadn’t formed them into fists or taken on any tension. “I’m just trying to live this quiet, peaceful life now. Not getting into any trouble. Keeping to myself. Really. I want to be a better person than I was.”
Laura stared at him for a long moment, assessing. His face was open. He didn’t glance up at her slyly to see if she was buying it. He just kept his eyes on the table. Sad eyes. Not afraid or angry or defensive. Just sad.
Sad that he’d been caught?
“Where were you last night?” Laura asked, switching tactics. They could get to the bottom of this easily. Either he had an alibi, or he was guilty.
“I was at home.” Dockhand paused, looking at his own hands. He moved them slightly, picking at a bit of loose skin on his thumb. Was that a tell? “On my own.”
“Not really an alibi, is it?” Nate spoke up for the first time, grunting.
“Not an alibi at all,” Laura said, her voice hard. “And the night before last?”
“I was watching TV on my own, at home, every night this week,” Dockhand said, taking care of her next question as well. “I know. It’s not proof. But I live alone and I’m not going out after work. I’m sober and I don’t want to get into anything again. I just… ask me about what I’ve been watching. Go on. I can tell you anything you need to know. Or—you can access my viewing records, right? See what I’ve streamed?”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Nate told him. “You could have set it up to run and then left home, and got back before you ever needed to press another button.”
Dockhand sighed. Miserable, not impatient or angry. “All right. But that’s where I was and what I was doing. I swear.”
“Do you hate me?” Laura snapped. “Is that what this is? I put you away for years. You must have missed so much. Do you want to hurt me with this?”
Dockhand blinked at her. “No,” he said. “I haven’t even thought about you for years.”
Laura sat back in her chair, studying him. He didn’t look up at her. He looked, strangely, contrite. But that could easily be an act. She’d come across psychos before now that were able to pretend convincingly enough.
But this one… she wasn’t so sure. He was totally different from how she remembered. He had been hot-headed back then, always ready to scream abuse and insults at anyone who crossed him. But a coward, otherwise. And now he was so meek, so quiet, just sitting there and accepting the accusations as if they didn’t matter.
The only reason Laura could think of for a man to act that way would be if he truly was innocent. Even if he was supremely confident that he wouldn’t be caught, Laura would have expected arrogance, flippancy, not calm and quiet.
She wanted it to be him. She wanted it badly. If it was him, then their work was done. They’d caught the killer, brought him off the streets, prevented any more women from being murdered. But just because she wanted a thing to be true didn’t make it so. One of the key tenets of being a good FBI agent was to keep your mind open, to avoid hemming yourself in to one theory. If you blinded yourself, you wouldn’t be able to see the truth.
Was that what was happening here? Laura knew she hadn’t had any new visions, even when she’d touched him to put the cuffs on. Sitting here opposite him now, she felt nothing. Did that mean that he wasn’t the killer? That she was touching the wrong things, putting herself in the path of the wrong people?
Of course, it could just have meant that they did have the right guy. No more visions because there were no more killings to come. It was over.
On the other hand, it could mean that she was now so far off base with her guess at who the killer was, that she had undone all of her earlier work and put herself at too much of a distance for a vision to come.
There was only one thing Laura knew for certain. They couldn’t let him go until they were sure he was innocent. Which meant that they were only just getting started with the mind games.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
He loitered in the doorway of a store, pretending to look at the window display, waiting for his next victim to pass him by on their way to lunch.
A man, this time. He’d thought, back when he planned all of this, that it was the right time to vary the pattern. Let them get absolutely sure it was only women who were at risk, and then take a man instead. That would put them all at a loss. He’d thought, back then, that it would be just a random agent keeping track of his misdoings. By the time this one was done, though, they would surely have made the connection and sent for her.
How lucky that she had been the one to come right away. That he had been able to savor every moment of her failure to catch him.
He had spent weeks preparing for this, and now he knew every moment of these people’s schedules. He even had reminders on his phone. It was noon, and that meant that his next target was heading to the same bakery that he always stopped at, picking up one of his favorite sandwiches for lunch before moving on to the park.
Did he vary his routine when winter came? The watcher could only wonder. He hadn’t been following them for that long. And it wouldn’t matter now, anyway. After tonight, this man would be dead, and he would never be going anywhere for lunch again.
The reminders on his phone were thinning out rather nicely now. It was so rewarding to delete them all one by one, to think about that FBI agent tearing her hair out as she tried to find the link between all of it. He liked to think of her, despairing, no idea who was going to be next. It was all rather fun.
The only unfortunate thing was that he couldn’t see her reaction in person. He had no idea whether Frost had yet worked out that it was all linked to her. He would have loved to have seen the fear on her face when she made the realization. Maybe she already had. Maybe it wouldn’t happen until much later. Until the number of dead bodies piled up in her name made her collapse with despair.
Yes, that would be sweet. How he would love to see her life ruined, the way his had been. How he would love to get his revenge.
The watcher caught a glimpse of a reflection passing by him, and he turned casually as if he was done with looking into the window. He stepped out into the street, shielding his eyes against the midday sun for a moment, and then strolled along behind his target, keeping easy pace a good distance from him. Just enough to keep him in sight, to be sure that there was no deviation from the norm.
Tonight, of all nights, it was important that everything went as normal. Because tonight was the night that this man was going to drive another nail into the coffin of Agent Frost’s career. Not just her career, but everything else. He was going to take this one last victim, and then she was the last. Number five.
Was she quaking with fear already? he wondered. Did she realize she was in danger? Even if she did, it wouldn’t matter. That was why he’d brought her out here. Somewhere she wasn’t familiar. Doing it in her home would have been so much harder, but here, she came into contact with new people all the time. Deputies, room service, servers, members of the public.
And, of course, when she did go back to the motel, she would be totally on her own.
He took a deep breath of the city air, tilting his head up to enjoy the late summer sun on his face. Yes, today was a good day.
But tomorrow was going to be even better.
&
nbsp; CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
“Aren’t you going to say anything at all?” Laura asked. “You’re not even going to defend yourself?”
Dockhand stared back at her mutinously. His arms were folded across his chest, and he quickly returned his gaze to the table, returning to the status quo. Not a single word.
Laura shoved her chair back with a frustrated scrape. Nate looked up at her, and though no one else would have been able to interpret it, his expression gave her permission: Go take a break. Get a bite to eat. Come back when you’ve got your second wind. I’ll handle this.
Laura stormed out through the door, and Nate announced her departure for the tape.
Laura sipped at her coffee as she stared at the recording on the computer in their makeshift office. An hour ago, Dockhand had finally lost his cool and stopped being so reasonable and calm. But that didn’t mean that he had snapped and confessed to anything. Quite the opposite. He had started refusing to say anything at all. She had fast-forwarded through most of it, playing back a few moments that she’d wanted to analyze deeper, but he was giving nothing away.
Laura blew out a deep breath and rolled the greasy packaging of her lunch sandwich up into a ball, then threw it into the trash can on the other side of the room. It hit the inside with a satisfying slap, then rattled down on top of the other trash. If only this case would be such an easy slam dunk.
Laura cast around for the small evidence bag she’d requisitioned. It contained the contents of Dockhand’s pockets when he came in. She reached in and touched the loose change he’d had, wishing it would trigger some kind of vision. Anything, really. It didn’t have to be his next intended murder. It could have been a sight of him inside a cell. Anything to tell her that she had the right guy, that his future was behind bars.
Nothing.
She sighed and put the bag to one side, rubbing her hands over her face. There was no evidence either way. The hard fact of the matter was that if they couldn’t get him to talk, they were going to have to let him go anyway. They had nothing on him. Only circumstance and the lack of an alibi.
That was what was so annoying about this case. If there was one shred of forensic evidence that they could use, they might be able to get somewhere. But the killer seemed always to wear gloves, and that meant that there was no evidence they could use to compare to Dockhand’s DNA. They had him right where they needed him to be, but they couldn’t prove a damn thing.
Not unless Nate managed to get him to admit everything, but given their progress over the last few hours, Laura wasn’t hopeful.
She needed an outside perspective, someone who could tell her what they thought of the case without any bias. Not that she was allowed to reveal the whole details of the case, but she could say enough to get a second opinion. Someone who wasn’t in law enforcement. Who didn’t have the trained perspectives that she and Nate did. Someone who could see things differently.
She picked up her phone and dialed, hoping that twice in twenty-four hours wasn’t too much to ask.
“Hello, Laura? Are you all right?”
Laura bit her lip at the sound of Garth’s concern. She hadn’t meant to worry him quite so much—but given that their last call had been about her sobriety, maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised.
“Yes, I’m fine. Sorry,” she said, quickly. “I actually just wanted to pick your brain about something. Get a second opinion.”
“Oh,” Garth said, breathing a literal sigh of relief. “Well, shoot then.”
Laura smiled to herself. He always came through, even when she didn’t really deserve it. He was probably on his own lunch break, and he didn’t care about letting her use his time. “It’s this case. It’s… targeted at me.”
“What do you mean, at you?”
“The victims.” Laura took a deep breath. “He’s choosing the victims in order to send me a personal message.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Absolutely sure. The third one last night confirmed it.” Laura bit her fingernail as she waited for his response. She didn’t want to mention the fact that Nate had had his doubts. Even if he did, she didn’t entertain them herself.
“Well, damn.” Garth paused. “There’s no wonder you’re feeling like you’re teetering on the edge. Now is the time when you have to stay more committed to your sobriety than ever. It’s these moments that catch us out. Stay strong, Laura. Don’t let it drag you to the bottle.”
“It’s not that,” Laura said, waving a dismissive hand even though Garth couldn’t see it. “We’ve arrested someone. I just don’t know if we have the right guy. All the signs seem to fit, and yet… I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it, but something doesn’t seem right. But then again, it all fits. And I just keep going round and round in circles in my head.”
Garth digested her words for a long moment. Just when she was about to speak up to prompt him to say something, he did. “Well,” he said, taking his time over the words. “You know you’re looking for someone who wanted to send you a message. But now you’re not sure if you have the right guy. Is that it?”
“That’s it,” Laura said, impatiently.
“Do you remember step number nine?”
There was no question as to which step he was referring to. It wasn’t as though there were any other steps that really mattered in an alcoholic’s life. He was talking about the steps of AA, how addicts were supposed to progress toward healing.
“Of course,” Laura said, mildly annoyed that he would question her memory. “That we have to make direct amends with those we have wronged.”
“So?”
Laura thought for a moment, trying to dig into what Garth was trying to say. “You’re talking about the killings—that whoever is doing this was wronged by me. But that doesn’t make any sense, Garth. They all deserved to be put away. They were criminals. They broke the law. I’ve never put away a single suspect that I didn’t feel absolutely sure was guilty.”
Of course, he couldn’t know why she was so sure. That she had seen each of them with her own eyes, breaking the law, red-handed. Sometimes she’d seen things she really wished she hadn’t, and she included Dockhand in that. He deserved to be in prison. The fact that he’d been released was concerning, frankly; she wished he could have been inside for longer.
“That’s not the point,” Garth told her. “You’re not the one doing the killings. What you feel doesn’t make a lick of difference.”
What he was trying to say slowly dawned on her. “You’re saying that the killer—he feels that I wronged him.”
“Right. Nobody goes ahead and takes revenge on someone they don’t think did them wrong. It’s not like antagonizing you would take away the past. It’s pure hate that drives something like this. They want you to suffer. That’s not the actions of a man who knows he was caught dead to rights.”
“It would be someone who doesn’t think they deserved to be put away,” Laura thought out loud. “Someone who feels that I interrupted their grand plan, maybe, or that they weren’t to blame for their actions. Or even that they did nothing wrong.”
“Does your suspect seem to feel that way?” Garth asked.
Laura sighed. “No,” she admitted. “If anything, it’s the opposite. He told us that he’s been trying to be a better person, that he knows he did wrong in the past. He wasn’t even angry when we arrested him. He said he totally understood. And I believe him. I’ve been on the job long enough that I can usually tell when someone’s trying to play me, but I don’t get that impression from him.”
“That doesn’t sound like the right guy to me,” Garth said, with confidence. “So, you’ve got to take a real look at yourself now. Look at your past. You’ve got to find someone who would feel that you wronged them, from their perspective—not from your own.”
“I get it,” Laura said, closing her eyes and pressing her fingers against her forehead for a moment. She was going to have to start again, and it was going to be a lot. “Than
ks, Garth.”
“No problemo, Laur. You just give me a call again if you waver, okay?”
“Okay,” she promised, before hanging up the phone and staring off into the distance, not seeing a thing.
Someone who had been wronged.
There had to be someone like that in her past.
If she needed to, she would go through every single file she had ever worked on until she found them. But she was going to have to do it fast—because if the man in that room with Nate wasn’t the real killer, then he was still out there, and he was still going to strike again tonight.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Laura stared at her own record on the screen, and tried not to let utter despair completely take over.
How had Nate faced down this list before and not just given up? It was immense. The cases built up quickly when you were working one a week, maybe more. There were cases that she had had only secondary involvement in, such as providing backup to a larger team. Cases where she’d been a junior agent assisting someone else. Cases she’d covered on her own. Cases with Nate.
So many crimes, and so many criminals. Any one of them could have the potential to be a killer. Even the ones who were arrested for less violent crimes—as much as Laura hated to admit it, the justice system didn’t always put out reformed citizens back into the world. Sometimes they were hardened, more ruthless. Sometimes they got their first kill on the inside.
She pushed herself back from the computer screen, holding her hands to either side of her temples. Nate had been checking through everything one by one, and he’d only gotten through a few years before she intervened. She wasn’t about to waste time in the same way.
She had to think about this logically. This wasn’t just a random selection of an agent who happened to be helping on the case. This was someone whose life she had impacted in a very direct way.
So, who would be angry with her for her actions against them? Angry enough to trigger a rampage of killing?
