by Rick Murcer
It must have only been a minute, yet it felt like a month, before he closed the file and turned his head, smiling one of those smiles that makes a person do a double take, especially a woman. Good-looking, in-shape potential bosses were a total bonus.
“Thank you for coming down on such short notice. Are you ready to see what we have to offer?”
Paige exhaled. “I’m a little nervous. This is my first interview in three months, so forgive me if I say something . . . well, stupid, okay? But yes, I’m excited to be here.”
She flashed a sparkling, white smile. Her best white smile. She knew she wasn’t breathtakingly beautiful, still she had enough to get a few roles in some Las Vegas shows. But even those limited show positions, which helped support her for the last five years, had dried up. At twenty-seven, it sucked to think she might be getting too old for some producers and directors.
Making money as a party girl was an option, like some of her friends had done. She’d even tried it one night. The dead presidents hadn’t been worth the overall humiliation of going against everything she knew to be right. So here she was, applying for a job that had to do with medical research, whatever that entailed.
The tall, dark-haired man laughed. “Don’t worry. We all have done that, or will most certainly in the future. I don’t look for perfection. I want potential.”
The tension flowed from her. His laugh was genuine and, in some odd way, comforting. It helped that he was a little older. This could be much more pleasant than she’d anticipated.
“That’s good to know,” Paige replied. “I have potential.”
“I can see that you do. You’re bright, and for this position, you’re a blonde with fair skin. That is exactly what we need,” he said.
“I guess that’s a good segue into my first question,” she said smiling. “What exactly does this job entail? I know the ad mentioned something about medical. What does that have to do with my features and hair?”
“I knew you had what we are looking for. I love it that you get to the point,” he said as he stood.
She stood, too, following his lead. She’d not met someone with this kind of charisma in . . . well, forever. She found herself wanting to say “yes” to anything he asked.
“Rather than spend precious minutes trying to explain the complete process and complex procedures of what we’re studying and why, let me show you. It’s really quite fascinating.”
He held out his hand, and for a reason she didn’t fully understand, Paige took it.
“Is this normal protocol?” she asked as she followed him through the scarred, double metal doors.
The first thing she noticed was the sterile scent. If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn she was in a hospital or a doctor’s office. To her left, there were three people dressed in green masks and surgical gowns working over a table but she couldn’t see what they were doing. She stopped, releasing her guide’s hand. She’d seen this before.
When her mother had fallen and broken her lower leg so badly that the compound fracture had actually forced the bone through the muscle and skin of her calf, Paige had ridden with her to the hospital. Before the ER nurse had kicked her out, she’d watched in a combination of fascination and anxiety as the operating room was prepared for immediate surgery.
Her heart sank as the scene before her brought back emotions she’d long buried. Her mom had died on that table. The doctors had screwed up the surgery—fatally.
After trying to cope with the loss of her mom and talking to a couple of shrinks, she decided to leave Ohio far behind. Just three weeks later, when she turned seventeen, she hit the road for Vegas.
Lyrics from an old tune sprang into her mind.
You can run, but you can’t hide.
“Are you all right, Paige?”
Eyes wide, she turned to him. “What is this place?”
“It’s a medical research center, as I mentioned.” He grasped her hand again. “Don’t be alarmed. They are following a new protocol that calls for—how shall I say it?—swift action in the event of an emergency.”
“What does that mean? I don’t even know what that research is. And I don’t know your name either.”
“Let me show you the rest of the facility, and I’ll answer all of your questions. I’ll start by giving you my name. I’m Doctor Fr−”
Paige raised her hand, turned, and started for the door. “On second thought, I’m not interested in any of this. It’s creepy.”
She was halted in her tracks. The man had a strength she’d not felt before. His hand was like a vise.
“Miss Madison. I’m afraid you’ll have to stay. We need what you have.”
“What? You can’t make me stay. This is still freaking America.” Paige began to struggle against her captor.
She intended for her tone to belie the fear that had escalated close to panic level. She’d been in a weird situation or two since moving to Sin City. Bullshit usually got her out of it.
Not this time.
With a yank, he had her close to him. Too close for a knee in the groin. Too tight to move.
“America it is. Land of the free, right?” he whispered.
The pinch on her arm caused her to yelp. The room immediately grew fuzzy. The next moment, her balance vanished as the tall man prevented her from hitting the cold cement floor.
“Thank you for staying, Paige.”
She tried to speak, but her lips wouldn’t move. Another moment later, the light left her world, and the black void threatened to swallow her.
Before she went out completely, she felt his breath on her ear.
“You’ve got the job.”
CHAPTER-6
“Oh great, what the hell does that mean?” asked Sophie.
“I don’t get your question,” said Manny.
She flipped her black hair from her face then put her hands on her hips.
“I mean, who goes around digging graves for the hell of it? And don’t give me that dumb-face thing, Williams. It doesn’t fit you.”
Manny exhaled. Sophie was progressing into a topnotch agent. With each case they worked, he saw her wheels turn faster than her typically sharp tongue. Yet sometimes her emotions, which played off the deep hurts of her past—as they did for most people—rose up and obliterated her logic. He wondered if her lack of beauty sleep was really the culprit or if she felt the same uneasiness about the situation at the graveyard.
He’d bet on the latter.
“Sophie. Take a deep breath and you tell me what it means. If it were you . . . why would you do it?” he said softly, his eyes scanning her face for the reaction he was hoping to see.
It didn’t take long.
“Good God, Williams, I wouldn’t do it. I’d rather have a great dinner or watch porn. But since you asked, you must mean other than the obvious intent to mess with us, or more likely, you.”
“Yep, I do.”
That’s my girl.
She hesitated. Her expression of confusion appeared, and then disappeared.
“Well, I could do a few things with an extra grave in the mix. I could switch bodies, sort of like a shell game, and see if you could figure out who was where and why I did it. But that would take a lot of time, and no matter how good I was or how late I worked in this cemetery, somebody would be bound to see me switching bodies, I’d guess.”
She shivered.
He didn’t blame her. They’d seen a bizarre display of body parts in San Juan, thanks to Josh’s adopted and insane brother, Caleb, yet the idea of defiling graves—as opposed to degrading bodies in a morgue—was way up the creep scale. Although both could cause nightmares of untold qualities, Manny believed.
“It wouldn’t be as noticeable if you’re just digging one grave. Normal course of business, right?” said Manny.
“Yeah. Not to mention the time it would take to do more than one, even with that backhoe Corner’s determined to kill himself with.”
“Hey, I ran that beast quit
e well,” defended Josh.
“Keep telling yourself that, big dog,” said Alex.
Manny ignored them and moved closer to Sophie.
“So what else?” he asked.
“Okay. When someone does something like this they could be looking for something,” said Sophie.
“Maybe, or, given the personality of our quasi-Argyle theory, he might be . . . ”
“. . . giving something, right?” finished Sophie.
Manny’s full-bodied profiler persona kicked in. He actually felt it. The way his brain worked disguised itself under the cover of a hate-love relationship. But he loved the way it worked in his mind today. At least most of it. It was like watching a movie in slow motion.
At the same time, he hated how the “gift” invaded his thinking process at the most private of moments. And there was no denying what his chosen profession had done to him personally, extracting a price that no one should have to pay.
Louise’s face passed over his mind.
No one should have to pay.
“Manny?” nudged Sophie.
“I’m here, just collecting my thoughts,” he answered.
Pity party later, Williams. Get your crap together.
“This kind of psychopath isn’t like the CEO of a company or even the manager of a fast-food store. Those people want to wield their authority directly, and they get their rise from ordering people to do what they don’t really like to do. They want to make sure people know who’s in charge,” said Manny.
“Which is a major power trip, but they don’t really play games, as a whole,” said Sophie, her eyes bright.
“You got it, Special Agent, so—”
“Are you saying this freak is screwing around and wants to tell us something? Really? ’Cause if that’s true, I’m not going to be happy and I’m going to have to beat the shit out of someone.”
“We’ll get you a sparring partner or a punching bag . . . because that’s exactly what I’m saying. What else could really be going on? We’ve just debunked the most likely scenario, at least in my mind, so whatever’s left is probably the truth,” said Manny. “I know. It’s another way to say what we’ve seen a few times. But these people can’t help themselves and remember what I said regarding the Ripper copycat. He has his own mark to make.”
“So that’s why Alex and I got the backhoe,” said Josh. “So we could test Manny’s theory.”
“Wait. You’ve already dug up the fifth grave? And you didn’t wait until Dean and I got here?” said Sophie.
Manny shook his head. “They’ve only dug to the point that a few more loads of dirt will get us to the coffin. You didn’t have to be here for the surface digging.” He grinned. “See? I’m sensitive to your sleep needs.”
“Whatever, Manny. I told you before that bullshitters can’t bullshit bullshitters.”
Her mouth twitched into a quick smile, one of his favorite traits about his long-time partner. She was fully aboard, and he needed her to be.
“Why yes, you have. At any rate, I do want all eyes on this part of the process. We have to make sure we don’t miss anything. You and Dean are as good as anyone with that.”
Glancing at Dean, he realized how quiet he’d been throughout the conversation. “Dean? Are you breathing?”
The forensics expert was scowling. “Breathing, yes. Trying to get my mind around this situation is a bit more difficult. If someone had checked out of reality like you suggest and had the intellect to match your Good Doctor, whom I’ve not met, then I anticipate there will be minimal physical evidence to provide us a clue as to who the gravedigger might be.”
“That’s a fair assumption, but—”
“Let me finish, Manny. The fact that they had someone dig these graves would help with that possibility, but if I understand this psycho type, that person would most certainly want to be here to put the final touches on the game, or whatever this is.” Dean stroked his beard, frowning harder than before.
Manny stayed silent.
“No matter how much information I could find on Argyle by Internet searches, I couldn’t find details that would be specific to his Bureau files anywhere. The fact that this person is duplicating some of those very actions can only mean that he or she had access to our confidential files.”
“That’s a remote possibility. We’ve been hacked a time or two. I think it more likely that this killer’s profile is similar to Argyle’s, like we’ve been discussing.”
“Copycat, almost?” asked Sophie. “So in the end, he’ll still be a wannabe?”
“Something like that,” answered Manny, feeling less confident than he sounded. What if Dean was right? Manny had dismissed the idea that Argyle had gotten further than Max Tucker in his endeavors to recruit converts at the Bureau. Argyle didn’t have his claws in that deep, right?
“Okay, enough of this talk. Let’s go see what this last hole in the ground has to show us,” said Josh.
Without another word, he and Alex climbed into the backhoe and headed south. Manny jumped into the SUV with Dean and Sophie. Ten minutes later, he watched a silver casket rise ever so slowly from the black Michigan soil.
Josh swung the oblong box to his right and, just as he began to ease it down, the chain slipped and the rear of the casket hit the ground with a loud thud. He watched as Josh frantically worked the levers to avoid a complete crash.
Whatever he did, it worked, and Manny felt the group’s collective sigh of relief as the front of the casket gently kissed the ground.
Alex jumped from the tractor’s cab, Josh right behind, much happier than the first time he’d exited the machine.
“Not bad, huh? That could have been way worse.”
“Yeah. I’ll give you that. The last thing we needed was whatever is inside that box to be scattered all over the ground.”
“You mean whomever,” said Josh softly, changing his demeanor as quickly as the Michigan weather.
“How do you know that someone’s in there?” asked Sophie, looking like she didn’t want to know the answer.
Manny knew what she meant.
“Because it felt heavy. Too heavy for just a coffin,” said Josh.
Manny moved toward the box.
“Only one way to find out for sure. Alex, grab that crowbar out of the tractor, and let’s see what we have.”
A minute later, Manny shoved the business end of the three-foot bar under the edge of the casket’s cover near the midway point and lifted. The top slid easily and fell to the ground.
He stepped closer and peered inside.
CHAPTER-7
Chloe could do little more than stare at the message, an impossible feeling of disbelief forcing her to read the text again, and then another time. She reclutched the phone, sat it on the table, picked it up again, and ran her finger over the screen. She didn’t recognize the area code but was fairly sure she hadn’t seen it on her phone before. No, make that absolutely sure.
What the hell was going on? A prank? If so, the humor was totally lost on her. She suspected Manny would feel the same. Shaking her head, she quickly ruled it out. Anyone who had ever had an encounter with Argyle, or anyone like him, would never walk down this road and call it a joke.
It had been only two days since she told Manny about the new life growing in her womb. They’d shared the news with only a few of their friends and close family for a million reasons, with privacy at the top of the heap. God knew just how little of that precious commodity the two of them, and Jen, had enjoyed over the last seven months. They were doing what they could to steal back some of that alone time, as improbable as that sometimes seemed fostering a life sandwiched around the Bureau . . . and Manny being Manny.
Rubbing her baby bump, she exhaled. “Okay, Chloe girl, no reason to panic a ‘tall,” she whispered. “Just a hack job or something. Total coincidence. That’s probably it.”
Somehow, none of her optimistic explanations made real sense or made her feel better.
The next
contemplation ricocheting across her mind forced her toward her Bureau training and how to analyze situations like this objectively. Yet that training was now dwarfed by a more urgent drive. Her maternal instinct was in full gear, trumping that training.
She tilted her head and focused on the inner battle. Perhaps that’s how it should be. Manny had said so often. He’d say training was important but “feeling” was what kept the good guys ahead of the bad guys, and in most cases, alive. That’s what this was. A feeling. Intuition. Whatever the hell you called it, she was beginning to see more of his point.
Profiling was based on the past experiences of a network of experts regarding the mind and body and how haywire, and predictable, they could be. But, in the end, each psychopath indulged in his fantasy just a little different than the rest. Manny saw those traits better than the other experts. That made his point of view the right one in Chloe’s mind. Another slow grin made its way across her mouth. Not that she was biased or anything.
A loud knock at the door caused her to jump, startled by the interruption of her reflections, causing a trip-hammer in her chest. Instinctively, she reached for the Glock normally holstered at her right side, but it wasn’t there. In fact, it hadn’t been there for a week or more—since Josh told her she was no longer a member of the BAU and to take a couple of weeks off from the Bureau until he got organized.
She walked into the bedroom, pulled her weapon from the nightstand, and moved to the front door on full alert, just as the next round of knocking began, louder than the first time.
Taking a moment to muster the rest of her composure, and to gather a better grip on her Glock, Chloe pulled the hammer back, then swung the door open to confront the unexpected visitor.
CHAPTER-8
The stench drifting from the coffin was robust, almost overwhelming, but Manny had already gone beyond that and the rest of the rancid odor’s effects. Sophie swore. Josh joined her. Alex immediately reached for his nose. Dean just moved closer. The rank smell crawled over Manny’s skin, yet he barely gave it a second thought. The scene inside the metal enclosure was far more interesting . . . even in its repulsive, warped presentation.
