Mackenzie White 10-Before He Longs

by Pierce, Blake

  When they arrived, there was a middle-aged man waiting for them in his pickup truck. He stepped out, unlatched an umbrella, and greeted them at their car. He handed them another umbrella with a lopsided smile.

  “No one from out of town really ever thinks to bring one,” he explained as Ellington took it. He popped it up and, as chivalrous as ever, made sure Mackenzie was fully underneath it.

  “Thanks,” Ellington said.

  “Quinn Tuck,” the man said, offering his hand.

  “Agent Mackenzie White,” Mackenzie said, taking the offered hand. Ellington did the same, introducing himself as well.

  “Come on, then,” Quinn said. “No sense in putting it off. I’d rather be home, if it’s all the same to you. The body’s gone, thank Jesus, but the unit still gives me the heebie jeebies.”

  “Is this the first time you’ve ever had something like this happen before?” Mackenzie asked.

  “It’s the first thing this terrible, sure. I had a dead raccoon caught in a unit one time. And this other time, wasps somehow got into a unit, made a nest, and dive bombed the renter. But yeah…nothing this bad before.”

  Quinn brought them to a unit with a black 35 plastered above the garage-style door. The door was open and a policeman was milling around in the back of the unit. He carried a pen and notepad, jotting down something as Mackenzie and Ellington entered.

  The policeman turned to them and smiled. “You folks with the bureau?” he asked.

  “We are,” Ellington said.

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Deputy Paul Rising. I thought I’d be out here when you arrived. I’m taking notes on everything stored in here, hoping to find some sort of clues. Because as of right now, there’s exactly none.”

  “Were you on the scene when the body was removed?”

  “Unfortunately. It was pretty gruesome. A woman named Claire Locke, age twenty-five. She’d been dead for at least a week. It’s not clear if she starved to death or bled out first.”

  Mackenzie slowly took in the sight of the unit. The back was stocked with boxes, milk crates, and several old trunks—typical things to be found in a storage unit. But the bloodstain on the floor made it quite different indeed. It wasn’t a very large one, but she guessed it could have resulted in enough blood loss to lead to death. Perhaps it was her imagination, but she was pretty sure she could still smell some of the stench the body had left behind.

  While Deputy Rising went on about his business with the boxes and bins in the back, Mackenzie and Ellington started to investigate the rest of the interior. As far as Mackenzie was concerned, a bloodstain on the floor pointed to something else worth finding. As she looked around for any clues, she listened to Ellington as he asked Rising about the case details.

  “Was the woman bound or gagged in any way?” Ellington asked.

  “Both. Hands tied behind her back, ankles tied together, and one of those ball gags in her mouth. The blood you see on the floor there came from a small stab wound high in her stomach.”

  Being bound and gagged at least explained why Claire Locke had been unable to make any noise to alert people on the other side of the unit walls. Mackenzie tried to imagine a woman locked in this crammed little space with no light, food, or water. It pissed her off.

  As she slowly made a circuit around the unit, she came to the corner of the doorway. Rain drummed down in front of her, slapping at the concrete outside. But just along the inside of the metal door frame, Mackenzie spotted something. It was very low to the ground, at the very base of the frame that allowed the door to slide up and down.

  She dropped to her knees and leaned in closer. When she did, she saw a splotch of blood on the edge of the groove. Not much…so little, in fact, that she doubted any of the cops had seen it yet. And then, on the floor just beneath the splotch of blood, was something small, ragged, and white.

  Mackenzie gently touched it with her finger. It was piece of a torn fingernail.

  Somehow, Claire Locke had managed to try to escape. Mackenzie closed her eyes for a moment, trying to envision it. Depending on how her hands had been tied, she could have backed up to the door, knelt down, and tried lifting the door upward. It would have been a futile attempt due to the lock outside, but certainly worth trying if you were on the verge of starving or bleeding to death.

  Mackenzie waved Ellington over and showed him what she had found. She then turned to Rising and asked: “Do you recall if there were any additional injuries to Ms. Locke’s hands?”

  “Yes, actually,” he said. “There were a few superficial cuts on her right hand. And I think most of one of her fingernails was missing.”

  He came over to where Mackenzie and Ellington were standing and let out a little “Oh.”

  Mackenzie continued looking but found nothing more than a few stray hairs. Hairs she assumed would belong to either Claire Locke or the owner of the unit.

  “Mr. Tuck?” she said.

  Quinn was standing just outside of the unit, perched under his umbrella. He was doing everything he could to not be standing in the unit—to not even be looking inside. At the sound of his name, though, he stepped inside reluctantly.

  “Who does this unit belong to?”

  “That’s the fucked up part,” he said. “Claire Locke had been renting this unit out for the last seven months.”

  Mackenzie nodded as she looked to the back, where Locke’s belongings were stacked to the ceiling in neat little rows. The fact that it was her storage unit did add a degree of eeriness to it, but, she thought, might work to their advantage in eventually establishing motive or even tracking down the killer.

  “Are there security cameras around here?” Ellington asked.

  “I just have one right up at the front entrance,” Quinn Tuck said.

  “We’ve watched all of the footage from the last few weeks,” Deputy Rising said. “There’s nothing out of the ordinary. Currently, we’re speaking to everyone who showed up here anytime during the last two weeks. As you can imagine, it’s going to be tedious. We still have a dozen or so people to question.”

  “Any chance we could get our hands on that footage?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Absolutely,” Rising said, though his tone indicated that she was nuts to want to go fishing through it.

  Mackenzie followed Ellington to the back of the unit. Part of her wanted to rummage through the boxes and bins but she knew it would likely not lead to much of anything. Once they had leads or potential suspects, they may find something worthwhile but until then, the contents within the unit would mean nothing to them.

  “Is the body still with the coroner?” Mackenzie asked.

  “To the best of my knowledge,” Rising said. “Want me to call and let them know you’re coming?”

  “Please. And see what you can do about getting us that video footage.”

  “Oh, I can send that, Agent White,” Quinn said. “It’s all digital. Just let me know where you want me to send it.”

  “Come on,” Rising said. “I’ll lead you to the coroner’s office. It’s just happens to be two floors below my office.”

  With that, the four of them exited the storage unit and walked back out into the rain. Even under the umbrella, it was loud. It came down slow but hard, as if trying to wash away the sights and smells the unit had seen.

  CHAPTER SIX

  As it turned out, Quinn Tuck was extremely helpful. It seemed he wanted to get to the bottom of what had happened just as badly as anyone. That’s why, when Mackenzie and Ellington got to the police station, he had provided a link for them to access all of his digital files from the security system at the storage complex.

  They decided to start with the security footage rather than the body of Claire Locke. It gave them a chance to sit down and somewhat collect their bearings. It was nearing nightfall now and the rain was still coming down. As Deputy Rising got them set up with a monitor, Mackenzie looked back on the day and found it hard to believe that she had been standing in a picturesqu
e garden and thinking about her wedding less than nine hours ago.

  “Here are the relevant time stamps,” Rising said, slipping Mackenzie a piece of paper from his notepad. “There aren’t many.” He tapped his finger at one entry in particular, written in slanted handwriting. “This is the only time we see Claire Locke enter the complex. We pulled her DMV info and got her license plate number, so we know it’s her. And this,” he said, tapping at another entry, “is when she left. And these are the only times she shows up on the footage.”

  “Thanks, Deputy,” Ellington said. “This helps tremendously.”

  Rising gave a little nod of acknowledgment before backing out of the tiny spare office the agents had been given. The monotonous work took a while, but as Rising had indicated, the local PD had already done some of the work for them. They were able to fast-track the footage when there was no activity on the screen. They started by checking the time stamps on the sheet of paper. When the car said to belong to Claire Locke came onto the screen, Mackenzie zoomed in but was unable to see a driver. She waited, watching the featureless entrance of the complex for twenty-two sped up minutes before Locke’s car was shown leaving. In the time she had spent there, no one else had arrived and no other cars had left.

  “You know,” Mackenzie said, “it’s entirely possible that she was not attacked at the storage unit.”

  “You think someone killed her elsewhere and brought her to the site?”

  “Maybe not killed her somewhere else, but potentially abducted her. I think seeing her body will help determine that. If she shows signs of starvation or dehydration, that basically tells us that she was dumped there.”

  “But according to the report, the lock was bolted from the outside.”

  “So maybe someone else has the key,” Mackenzie suggested.

  “Probably someone in one of the other cars on these days and days of footage.”

  “Most likely.”

  “You want to stay here and roll through this while I go check out the body?” Ellington asked. “Or the other way around?”

  Mackenzie pictured the poor woman, alone in the dark and unable to so much as scream for help. She envisioned her stumbling in the dark to try to find some way to at least try to get that door open.

  “I think I’d like to check the body. You good here?”

  “Oh yeah. This is streaming at its finest. No commercials or anything.”

  “Good,” she said. “See you in a bit.”

  She leaned down and kissed him on the side of the mouth before leaving. She did it naturally and without much thought, even though it wasn’t the most professional thing. It was a good reminder of just why they wouldn’t be able to work together in this capacity after they were married.

  Mackenzie left the little office space in search of the morgue while Ellington watched time unroll in fast-forward motion on the screen.

  ***

  The question as to whether or not Claire Locke had experienced starvation or dehydration of any degree during her time in the storage unit was answered the moment Mackenzie saw her. While Mackenzie was not an expert on the subject, there was a hollow look to the young woman’s cheeks. There might have been a similar look to her stomach as well but it was not clear due to the incision the coroner had made.

  The woman who met her at the morgue was a rotund and eerily pleasant woman named Amanda Dumas. She greeted Mackenzie warmly and stood back against a small steel table that was adorned with the tools of her trade.

  “Based on your examination,” Mackenzie said, “would you say that the victim experienced severe hunger or dehydration before she died?”

  “Yes, though I don’t know to what extent, exactly,” Amanda said. “There’s very little fatty acid in her stomach—hardly any at all. That, plus some signs of muscle deterioration, indicates that she experienced at least the first pangs of starvation. There are telltale signs of dehydration as well, though I can’t be sure that either of those is what killed her.”

  “You think she bled out first?”

  “I do. And quite frankly, that would have been a blessing for her.”

  “Based on what you’ve seen with the body, do you believe she was alive when she was placed in the storage unit?”

  “Oh, without a doubt. And I’d say it was against her will as well.” Amanda stepped forward and pointed to the abrasions on Locke’s right hand. “Looks like she put up a fight of some kind and then tried her best to escape at some point.”

  Mackenzie saw the cuts and noted that one of them looked rather ragged. It could have easily been placed there by the grooved runner that the unit door ran within. She also saw the fingernail that had been torn.

  “There’s also bruising along the back of her head,” Amanda said. She used a comb-like tool to move Claire’s hair aside. She did so with a loving sort of respect and care. When she did this, Mackenzie was able to see an angry purple bruise along the upper base of her neck where her skull joined it.

  “Any signs that she was drugged?” Mackenzie asked.

  “None. I still have one chemical analysis I’m waiting on, but based on everything else I’ve seen, I’m not expecting anything from it.”

  Mackenzie assumed the bruise to the back of the head along with the ball gag found in her mouth was more than enough reason for Claire Locke to not have raised any fuss or alarm when she was carried into the storage unit. She thought about the video footage again, certain that the driver of one of the cars was responsible for her murder—and the death of the other person found last week, according to the reports.

  Mackenzie looked back down at the body with a frown. It was a natural reaction to always feel some sort of remorse for anyone who had been murdered. But Mackenzie was feeling a stronger sense of sadness with Claire Locke. Maybe it was because she could picture her all alone in that dark storage unit, unable to properly move or call out for help.

  “Thanks for the information,” Mackenzie said. “My partner and I will be in town for a few days. Let me know if anything shows up in that last chemical report.”

  She left the morgue and headed back up to the main floor. On her way back to the little office she and Ellington were working out of, she stopped by the dispatch desk and requested a copy of the current file on Claire Locke. She had it in her hands two minutes later and carried it back to the office.

  She found Ellington staring at the monitor, reclined back in his chair.

  “Anything so far?” she asked.

  “Nothing concrete. I’ve watched seven more vehicles come and go. One stayed for about six hours before leaving. I want to check with the PD to see which of these people they have already spoken with. For Claire Locke to end up in that storage unit, someone on this footage had to have driven her there.”

  Mackenzie nodded in agreement as she started looking through the file. Locke had no criminal record at all and the personal details didn’t offer much. She was twenty-five years old, graduated from UCLA two years ago, and had been working as a digital artist with a local marketing firm. Divorced parents, the father living in Hawaii and the mother somewhere in Canada. No husband, no kids, but there was a note along the bottom of the personal details sheet that stated her boyfriend had been informed of her death. He’d been called yesterday at three in the afternoon.

  “How much time do you have left on that?” she asked.

  Ellington shrugged. “Three more days, it looks like.”

  “You good here while I head out to speak to Claire Locke’s boyfriend?”

  “I guess,” he said with a comical sigh. “Married life is coming up. Better get used to seeing me sitting in front of a screen all the time. Especially during football season.”

  “That’s fine,” she said. “As long as you’re fine with me heading out and doing my own thing while you’re doing it.”

  And to show him what she meant, she headed back out. She called over her shoulder: “Give me a few hours.”

  “Sure thing. But don’t expect dinn
er to be ready when you get back.”

  The banter between them made her incredibly happy that McGrath had allowed them to work this case together. Between the gloom and rain outside and her peculiar sadness toward Claire Locke, she didn’t know if she would have been able to properly handle this case on her own. But with Ellington here, she felt that she had a piece of home with her—somewhere to return in the event the case got too overwhelming.

  She headed back outside. Night had fallen and although the rain had once again settled down to a lazy drizzle, Mackenzie couldn’t help but feel that it was an omen of sorts.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mackenzie knew nothing about the boyfriend, as there was nothing about him in the notes. All she knew was that his name was Barry Channing and that he lived at 376 Rose Street, Apartment 7. When she knocked on the door of Apartment 7, it was answered by a woman who looked to be in her late fifties or so. She looked tired and saddened—and clearly not happy to have a visitor after nine o’clock on a rainy Sunday night.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked.

  Mackenzie nearly double-checked the number on the door but instead stated, “I’m looking for Barry Channing.”

  “I’m his mother. Who are you?”

  Mackenzie showed her ID. “Mackenzie White, with the FBI. I was hoping to ask him some questions about Claire.”

  “He’s really in no state to talk to anyone,” the mother said. “In fact, he—”

  “My God, Mom,” a male voice said, coming toward the door. “I’m okay.”

  The mother stepped aside, making room for her son to stand in the doorway. Barry Channing was rather tall and had close-cropped blond hair. Like his mother, he looked low on sleep and it was clear that he had been crying.