Because of Higdon’s clean record, Mackenzie was not expecting much when they searched her apartment later that morning. She and Ellington entered the place only because it was the single lead they had. Granted, part of Mackenzie almost expected to find some sort of doll or tea party set up in the apartment. But there was nothing.
Ellington surfed through the web browser history of Higdon’s laptop while Mackenzie looked the bedroom over. After half an hour of searching, neither of them found anything that was remotely linked to her murder or the storage unit. Just like the storage unit, Higdon’s apartment turned up nothing.
Frustrated and more defeated than she had felt on a case in a very long time, Mackenzie knew that the only thing they could do for the remainder of the day was to hole up at the police station and dig into the files. As calls were made to all of the other storage complexes in the city, her hope was that some little detail might come from one of the owners, just the tiniest little nugget that might lead them somewhere.
They found themselves back at the station, in the conference room by themselves, trying to talk the case out. It was usually these environments that Mackenzie and Ellington really started firing on all cylinders—in a room together, firing ideas back and forth until something clicked and just made sense. It had happened several times before but within five minutes, they knew that it was not going to be the case this time around. Something just felt off…not only with the case, but between them as well.
“Let’s start with the most obvious fact,” Mackenzie said, sitting across from Ellington and finding it hard to truly focus on him. “He’s renting these units in advance. So I think it’s safe to assume he knew why he’d be renting them.”
“Makes sense, but that could get pretty expensive. We also need to consider, though, that not all of the victims have been found in units under his name. In Claire Locke’s case, for example, the unit belonged to her, the victim.”
“I’m getting hung up on that, too,” Mackenzie said. “But I wonder if maybe that one was just a matter of convenience. It would also indicate that even though he does rent these units, he doesn’t feel the need to use them all of the time. There’s apparently nothing special about them. He saw an opportunity to easily dispose of a body in a unit that was right there and he took it.”
“Another thing that’s not sitting well with me is the fact that some of the units are basically empty, while others seemed to be almost staged.”
“Did Rising ever get back to us about what the police found in the boxes in this latest unit?”
Ellington pulled up a text from Rising on his phone and read it. “It’s still in progress, but so far it looks like all filler stuff. Toilet paper, jugs of distilled water, old magazines. Nothing that someone would actually need a storage unit for. No personal belongings, no clutter, nothing like that.”
“I agree then,” Mackenzie said. “I think the boxes in this last one was like stage dressing. Not quite as symbolic as whatever he’s doing with the dolls and teacups, but decoration all the same.”
“Yeah, but why?”
“I have no idea,” Mackenzie answered. “And that’s what’s driving me crazy.”
Ellington let out a sigh and then got up from his chair. “I’m going to point something out and it’s probably going to piss you off.”
“Maybe don’t point it out then.”
Ignoring her, he awkwardly walked around the table toward her. “You took something I said very personally last night. And maybe I’m stupid for not quite realizing why it upset you so much. But whatever it is, it’s clearly bothering you. I’ve never seen you so flustered over a case before. So if the argument we had is to blame for that, I think we need to get to the bottom of it right now.”
“I’m about to marry a man who feels that I put way too much attention and focus on my job,” she said. “Maybe you meant what you said as a compliment…but to me, a woman who is quite frankly terrified of getting married, it was very off-putting. And if you can’t see that about me at this stage, I think I might have been a little too generous in the way I thought you knew me.”
“You’re terrified of marrying me? You’ve used the word nervous before. Jittery, too. But this is a new word. And I think it’s a pretty strong one.”
“Well, it’s true.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
“I don’t know. It came out of nowhere. I think it had something to do with meeting your mother—as briefly as that might have been. It was the first time it actually seemed real.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No. But it was an abrupt thing. It hit me out of nowhere.”
Ellington seemed to sit on this for a moment, going through every possible response in his head before responding. “I love you very much, Mackenzie. But if you’re getting cold feet, I think that’s something we need to address.”
“Agreed,” she said, angry at herself for being so passive right away. “But first, let’s see if we can’t wrap this case. Sorry…but it takes priority as far as I’m concerned.”
Ellington folded his arms and nodded. “I’m going to get some coffee,” he said with a grunt of frustration.
He left the room, closing the door behind him. When it was closed, Mackenzie had to fight the urge to slam her fist down on the table. Why the hell was she being so angry and stubborn to Ellington? She knew very well that he had not meant anything ill by what he had said. And yes, she was a little freaked out about the wedding, but she figured that was normal. Wasn’t it an almost expected thing for at least one member of the couple to get cold feet as the wedding date approached?
She did her best to wipe all of that out of her mind for the moment. She refused to get distracted when she was working a case that already seemed to be getting the best of her.
She repositioned her focus on the case. There was nothing to really cling to yet, so she tried to imagine why the killer might rent the units so far in advance. How long had he been planning this? And, worse than that, how many units had he rented?
Bingo, she thought.
She reached for her phone, intending to call Rising. If they could get in touch with every local storage complex like they had planned and have them check their records for any units belonging to Mark Riley, they could cut him off before he struck again.
Or could they? There was no guarantee that he was killing his victims in the units.
Before she had time to call Rising, Ellington came back into the room. He looked hurried and a bit excited.
“We got a hit,” he said. “An officer spoke to a storage center five minutes ago…and the owner said there are scratching and moaning noises coming from inside a unit.”
Mackenzie instantly got to her feet. “Did they instruct him not to open it?”
“That’s been the instruction from the start,” Ellington said. “Don’t open the unit in case the killer is inside. It wastes some time for us but keeps the owners safe.”
“How far away is this center?”
“Fifteen minutes.”
They both broke into a run down the hall. And just for that small moment, everything felt exactly right between them again.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
The storage facility in question was a generic run-of-the-mill complex. Fifty individual storage sheds with garage-style doors, about twenty by twenty in diameter, sat on a crammed lot. When Mackenzie and Ellington arrived, the gates had been closed and locked, as the police had been calling around and instructing the owners to do. A man—presumably the owner—stood behind them pacing while speaking to someone on his phone. When he saw Mackenzie and Ellington pull up and park, he ended the call and unlocked the gates.
“Is there still movement in the unit?” Mackenzie asked as they got out. She didn’t even bother with introductions or formalities. They were on a clock, potentially rushing toward a unit to save a life. She had gone so far to as to call for an ambulance as she and Ellington had raced over.
; “Yeah,” the owner said. “I heard it no more than two minutes ago.”
“Which one?” Ellington asked.
“Unit Seven, down on the right. I already went ahead and unlocked it for you.”
They ran at a full sprint down the concrete passage between the two rows of units. As they drew close to Unit 7, Mackenzie drew her Glock. Maybe…just maybe, they had caught the killer in the act.
But her instincts started to sense that this wasn’t the case. After all, the gates had been locked for a while now and there appeared to be no cars other than the owner’s on the property. Still, potentially saving a life was more than enough. Feeling a little silly, she holstered her sidearm as they came to the door of Unit 7.
Even as Ellington reached down for the door’s handle, Mackenzie could hear the sound of movement inside. A series of little thuds and long scratching noises. The scratching sounds were almost paralyzing—the equivalent of nails down a chalkboard.
“If you can hear me,” Ellington said, “I need you to step away from the door. This is the FBI and we’re coming in!”
The noises stopped, causing Mackenzie and Ellington to share a hopeful glance. With a heave upward, Ellington rolled the door up. Mackenzie eyes went to the floor right away, expecting another crimson pool of blood, another woman needlessly maimed.
But there was nothing.
“What the hell?” Ellington asked.
But even as the question came out of his mouth, they both saw the movement to the left. Mackenzie wheeled in that direction, again going for her sidearm. As her hand fell on the butt of the Glock, embarrassment slammed into her like a rock.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she asked.
A raccoon went scampering out through the opened doorway. Ellington had apparently been caught unawares well because he took a surprised step backward, also reaching for his sidearm.
Mackenzie watched as the creature went running elsewhere along the property. She wished she could chuckle about it, that it was a story she might pull out later in her career for a good laugh. But as she stood there in the doorway of the storage unit, she felt an anger that was unlike any other she had ever felt.
Two memories flashed through her mind. She thought of the Scarecrow Killer, the very first case that had truly gotten under her skin back before she’d been with the bureau—when she’d still been a detective out in Kansas. And then she thought of meeting with her mother in the employee break room of a motel, moments before finally closing the case on who had killed her father.
She’d felt rage in those moments, of course. But what she felt as she caught the last glimpse of that raccoon scurrying out into the road—where she hoped it would get obliterated by a tractor trailer—dwarfed those emotions.
Mackenzie felt herself clenching her fists as she walked back up the concrete walkway toward the gates. The owner was still there, his gaze now following after the raccoon that had made its escape.
“Oh my God,” he said as Mackenzie came by. “I had no idea. I’m sorry. Damned thing was even making some kind of a mewling sound, too. Sounded just like a woman, but quiet.”
Mackenzie heard his words but ignored them. She went directly for the car and waited for Ellington. She watched him as he neared the car. The look on his face made it clear that he had been just as embarrassed as she had. But she was taking it personally, and she didn’t know why.
As if to put an exclamation point on the day’s events as well as her mood, a faint drizzle of rain started to pelt the windshield.
Mackenzie closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on her breathing.
Why is this case bothering me so much? Why am I devouring Ellington with my anger every time we have a conversation?
Suddenly, in the further recesses of her mind, a thought occurred to her. She opened her eyes again, pulling that thought to the surface.
She thought she might know why she was taking the case so hard and why she was simply not letting Ellington off so easily.
It was just a hunch, but it was something.
And facing that would be worse than the continuous rain, worse than any argument she or Ellington might ever have.
She closed her eyes again as a knot of worry started to form in her stomach.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
He knew everything had been far too easy up to this point. He would have been naïve to think it could have kept continuing at this pace. At some point, he was going to hit a snag. And as he watched the people get out of the car from the grimy window of his shed, he saw that snag.
How had he not prepared for this? Of course a woman wasn’t going to come to this part of town without some sort of protection. And in this case, that protection was a man. The man, honestly, wasn’t much to fear, though. He was fairly short and a little overweight. As he and the woman neared the shed, the man looked around suspiciously. He said something and they both laughed nervously.
Before they could figure out that something might be up, he opened up the shed door—not the roll-up door, but the plain old wooden door that led in and out. He greeted them with a smile and a wave. He knew he had an innocent sort of look, a look that would not raise any alarm in most people. The fact that this woman had contacted him about possibly buying some antique dolls from an ad on Craigslist probably upped the harmless factor.
“Thanks for coming out all this way,” he said as they neared the shed. “I have a truck and would have been happy to bring them to you, but the engine started acting up last week and I haven’t been able to afford to fix it.”
“Not a problem,” the girl said.
The man—a boyfriend, he assumed—stepped between them and offered his hand. “I’m Brian,” the boyfriend said.
He gave Brian his name and shook his hand. He then led the couple inside the shed. He’d had the place for three years now, purchased at an auction when some failed real state jerk-off had died. He’d used it for several things over time—practicing with his now-defunct band, sleeping out of when he had been homeless for few months last year, and, most recently, to store some of his dolls and teapots and accessories.
“Forgive me for asking…” the woman said. Her name was Daisy Walker and he didn’t think much of her. Honestly…who shopped around on Craigslist anymore?
“Ask away,” he said.
“How’d you end up with so many old dolls?”
“My aunt,” he lied. “She held on to all of her old dolls, hoping she’d pass them down to a daughter. But she never had a daughter. When my aunt passed away, she passed them down to me in her will. No idea why. It was like some cruel joke.”
He led them to the back of the shed where the plastic bins were stacked in rows of four, two bins high. He selected the one he needed and pulled it down. He removed the lid and allowed her to look inside.
“What do you need them for, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“We’re going to go all out for Halloween this year,” she said.
“So you want the grungier ones, I guess?”
“Probably,” she said.
“Well, take your pick. I just want to get rid of them, so I can cut you a great deal.”
She seemed pleased with this, as she started looking into the bins right away. Her boyfriend didn’t seem to be very involved but watched as she sifted through the dolls.
He watched them both from the corner of his eye as he pretended to be busy with something at the makeshift workbench on the other side of the shed. He moved quietly, humming to himself, trying to be a non-factor to them. When he was certain that both of their backs were turned to him, he slipped the flat-headed screw driver into the pouch of the hooded sweatshirt he was wearing.
“Hey, how much would you sell a whole bin for?” Daisy called out.
“I don’t know,” he said, walking slowly over to them. “Ten bucks? Does that sound fair?”
“Yeah, that sounds great,” Daisy said. She then looked to her boyfriend and gave him a dainty smile. “Pay the man, plea
se.”
The boyfriend frowned and reached for his wallet. As his head tilted down the slightest bit, that’s when the screwdriver came out of the pouch pocket.
He drove the flat-headed end of it into the base of the boyfriend’s neck. He drove it in with harsh force, creating a popping noise as it tore through the flesh.
The jettison of blood was immediate. It gushed out, as the screwdriver had torn through the carotid artery. The boyfriend staggered back, colliding with Daisy.
He released the screwdriver, knowing full well that even if the boyfriend managed to free the screwdriver and live, he’d only last a minute or so—and he’d certainly not be in any shape to put up much of a fight.
Daisy caught herself on the edge of the bin but as she tried to support herself, the bin went spilling over. This sent her to the floor. She fell with her boyfriend collapsing beside her. His blood was still gushing out, splashing on her bare arms and the floor of the shed. This was unfortunate but nothing to be too concerned about. He’d make sure to clean it as best as he could later.
For now, there was Daisy to worry about.
He removed his hooded sweatshirt and fell down on top of her. He covered her face with the sweatshirt, pressing hard enough to where he could feel the resistance of the concrete floor against her head. Beside them, the boyfriend made a few retching noises, gasping for breath that was blocked by the screwdriver.
He tied the sleeves of the hoodie tight around the back of Daisy’s head. He then kicked her hard in the ribs to take the fight out of her.
He stepped back and examined the scene. The entire ordeal had taken less than ten seconds. The boyfriend was nearly motionless and his eyes were going glassy. Daisy, meanwhile, was trying to scream through the sweatshirt.
He thought about taking her back to his house. But that was risky. The feds had already been there. He had led them there, in fact. Soon, he supposed they’d catch on. And they’d be in on his fun.
He smiled as he kicked Daisy again, this time in the stomach. She gasped under the sweatshirt, a sound that made him wonder if she would pass out.
Mackenzie White 10-Before He Longs Page 11
