Mackenzie White 10-Before He Longs

by Pierce, Blake

  “Yes, that’s one of mine. I was going to sell the dolls individually, really cheap. But he offered a decent price for several boxes. Same with the tea sets.”

  “Ms. Towers…I can’t stress this enough. Was there anything at all that stood out about this man? Anything at all that you could tell me that might help me determine who he is or where he lives?”

  Mildred thought about it for a moment, her head cocked as if a memory had just become dislodged. “You know, I think he did make some sort of a comment about the way I had the place set up. He said the mess of it all made him feel claustrophobic. He went on and on about how he hoped it wasn’t insulting but he wanted to get out as soon as he could because he was very claustrophobic. He was practically sweating when I led him to the back room where the dolls were.”

  That checks out with my claustrophobia theory, Mackenzie thought. Slowly…slowly… We’re getting there.

  “Do you remember how he paid?”

  “Yes, he paid with cash. And he also…”

  Again, she paused here and her face seemed to slowly go pale.

  “Ms. Towers?”

  “Oh my. Hold on one second, would you, dear?”

  Mildred went back behind her little desk and opened up the bottom drawer. She started fishing through it for something, her back bent awkwardly while sitting in the little chair behind the desk.

  “People call me a pack rat,” she said good-naturedly as she went through the drawer. “I suppose they’re right. It’s why I love running this little business and maybe why it looks the way it does. But being a pack-rat means I throw nothing away. In this drawer right here, I have messages from clients from years ago. Letters, cards, things like that. I keep it all.”

  Seconds later, she sat back up. There was a scrap of blue paper in her hand, colored card stock from the looks of it. There was something written on it.

  “He left this. I damn near forgot about it. When he was here, I thought I was going to have a woman bring in another tea set that week. I told him and he said he was interested in it. He wanted to know if I could deliver it to him when it came in. And he wanted me to deliver it here.”

  Mackenzie took the paper and saw that an address had been written on it. This is it, she thought. This is the break we’ve been waiting for.

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Oh, I’m not sure. More than six months ago but certainly not any more than a year. Say eight months ago, just to be safe.”

  “Did you ever deliver that tea set?”

  “No, it never showed up. Besides…there’s no way I would have gone out there. A grown man buying several boxes of dolls…I’m not going to just go out in the middle of nowhere and drop some stuff of to him.”

  “Is that where this is?” Mackenzie asked, showing the address. “The middle of nowhere?”

  “Basically. It’s a back road that runs along some of those old logging roads that used to run outside of the city back in the forties and fifties.”

  “Ms. Towers, you’ve been more help than you can imagine,” Mackenzie said. “Thank you so much for your time.”

  “Of course. Glad to help.”

  “Do you happen to know how far away this address is?”

  “Maybe twenty minutes or so. But I’m telling you, there’s not much out there. Seems like the perfect place for a creepy man to go spend some time alone with dolls.” She gave a theatric little shiver as she said this.

  It was not the image Mackenzie needed in her own mind as she left Things Forgotten, that was for sure. But it was in the center of her mind as she pulled out of the parking lot with the address plugged into her GPS—an address the killer had written in his own handwriting not too long ago.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  “This is Ellington.”

  Hearing his voice through the phone was just as calming as his arm around her last night when she’d been unable to go back to sleep.

  “Where are you right now?” she asked.

  “I’m with Rising. We’re coming up in the location of Brian Dixon’s phone. It’s looking like we’re going to have to hike a bit out into the woods. How about you?”

  “I got a potential address for our killer from the woman at Things Forgotten. I have confirmation that this address was given to her by a man who purchased several boxes of dolls and tea set items all in one fell swoop.”

  “Mac…you can’t go somewhere like that by yourself.”

  “I’ll be fine. She said he purchased the stuff nearly eight months ago. That, plus the fact that he’s on the run, makes me think he’s not going to be anywhere near a place he considers home. Especially not if he was giving the address to people without any reservation when he was planning all of this.”

  “Okay,” Ellington said, though there was some worry in his voice. “Just be careful. Yesterday proved to me just how quickly things can take a turn for the worst.”

  “I know. You be careful, too.”

  She ended the call and checked her GPS again. The route was quickly taking her out of the building and structure of the city, leading into the sparse woodland that sat on the outskirts. Like the rural areas outside of any major city, it started very subtly but, in certain portions, started to overtake the land quickly. According to the route she was seeing, the address wasn’t too far away from the house she had already visited twice. This new address was along the same stretch of forest, perhaps eight or nine miles away from the house.

  This could be another decoy, she thought. We’ve come across two other addresses fairly easily—not to mention a storage unit that he led us directly to. What if this was planned? What if he gave Mildred Towers a fake address just to cover his ass if this day ever came?

  Then she’d have to accept that when the time came. For now, as far as Mackenzie was concerned, it was a hell of a strong lead. Maybe one that would lead them directly to the killer.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  For a moment, she wondered if her GPS had misled her. It wouldn’t be the first time it had led her astray in wooded areas. She turned off of the main road and onto a gravel road. This was where the GPS had given up, claiming that she had reached her destination. She nearly turned around when she caught sight of the small turn-off just up ahead. She continued up the gravel road and took the left turn.

  She’d been expecting a house, maybe even a mobile home tucked away in the quiet of the woods. But what she saw instead was an old shed. It looked like a hybrid of a barn from a picturesque farm and an older auto garage. There was a single rolling door that took up most of the exterior wall. It was similar to the ones on the storage units she had been investigating, only larger. Beside it was a normal door, battered and discolored with age.

  At first glance, the place looked like it hadn’t been used for ages. But her GPS had led her here. And it did seem like a perfect place to store something as creepy as multiple boxes of dolls. She figured she might as well check it out. She’d driven all the way out here, after all.

  She parked her car and stepped out into the little yard area in front of the building. It was quiet here but she could still faintly hear the hum of engines and life six or seven miles to the east where Seattle thrived.

  She approached the door slowly. There were four square panes of glass, all stacked two by two to make up a larger square with a cross-shaped pane between them. She peered inside and saw the first indication that maybe the place had been used recently after all. There was a crude little workbench along the back wall. A few tools were scattered around on it. And there, along the back wall, were several boxes.

  Mackenzie tried the door, not surprised to find it locked. She looked at the large garage door and wondered if it was even worth trying. She located the handle on the side. It had a lock and a lever mechanism that allowed the user to set the door open at different levels. She grabbed the handle and pulled up hard. The door came up quickly, taking her by surprise. However, it stopped in its tracks after coming up about two feet. There, th
e rusted latch seemed to catch the progress of the door along the rolling tracks, making it come to a stop. She heaved again, but the door wouldn’t budge.

  With a sigh, Mackenzie dropped to her knees and then to her stomach. She slid easily under the open space, feeling almost childlike as she rolled under it and into the shed—or garage, or whatever the hell this place was.

  She got to her feet, brushing the dirt and dust from her shirt and pants. She started across the large open area toward the boxes but came to a sudden stop.

  There was something on the floor—something that made her think of the dream she’d had last night. At first, she thought it was just oil, maybe from someone’s truck. But the stuff on the floor was pretty dark. If it was discarded oil, it had only been there for a day or so.

  She knelt by the dark liquid on the ground. She touched it gingerly. It was sticky and relatively fresh. She knew right away what it was…had really even known before she had touched it.

  It was blood. And a great deal of it.

  Mackenzie drew her Glock, suddenly feeling very much trapped. Still, she went to the boxes at the back of the floor. She peered inside the first one and saw several dolls. Her heart hammered in her chest as the entire case seemed to come crashing in around her, all locking into place. There were four other boxes to check. She looked through all of them, finding dolls in all of them and even a few ceramic teapots in the last one.

  She then went over to the workbench. There was a soft black mat running along the front of it, the sort to east tension on the ankles and knees from standing for long periods of time. She stepped on this mat as she looked at what was on the bench. There were three screwdrivers sitting there, along with a knife. The knife was gleaming and sparkling clean. One of the screwdrivers, on the other hand, seemed to be coated in blood. Probably the same blood that had been spilled on the floor.

  She stepped back off of the mat, fully intending to go back to the car and call Ellington. When she stepped backward, she felt something give underneath the black cushioned mat. She stepped on it again, applying more pressure this time. When she did, she felt more give than the cushion should have supplied.

  Mackenzie bent over, grabbed the mat, and pulled it away.

  A hatch had been installed in the floor. It made her think that this building had indeed been some sort of garage back in the day. While she had never seen a garage with primitive tools, she was fairly certain this hatch was installed to allow mechanics to get underneath cars when jacks or lifts weren’t available.

  Unsure of how the hatch even worked, she managed to find a handle at the top, the sort of concave handle that went into the door rather than out like a traditional handle. She grabbed it and pulled it. The door rolled away into a slot that had been installed within the floor, the door sliding back on rusty rails.

  She looked down and saw a thin metal ladder attached to a grimy wall. The drop wasn’t far at all. She figured she’d probably even have to duck down to fully venture into the space.

  “What the hell am I doing?” she asked herself out loud.

  She then turned herself around, got on her knees, and started to descend the little ladder. The rungs were cool and grimy, sticky with years upon years of automotive fluids and God only knew what else. When she reached the bottom, she saw that her assumption had been right. The little pit wasn’t very deep at all—maybe four feet at most. When Mackenzie stood at full height, the lip of the pit came up to her breasts.

  There was a small crawlspace-type area to her right, though. The walls were made of what looked like old boards and plywood. It looked sturdy but still rickety all the same. When she hunkered down, she could just barely make out some gray muted shapes further along the darkened pit. To get back there, she’d have to hunch over severely or even crawl.

  She reached for her flashlight, and that’s when she heard a voice from overhead.

  “You shouldn’t have gone down there.”

  She looked up, fumbling for her Glock as she started to get to her feet.

  But she never got into a standing position. The man above her, leering down at her in victory, slammed the door to the pit shut.

  The noise was deafening, ringing out like metallic thunder through the pit. With the hatch closed, Mackenzie was thrown into absolute darkness. She instinctually tried pulling at the hatch door, but it did not budge. The man above had apparently locked it.

  “You have to let me out,” Mackenzie demanded. “I’m an FBI agent. You’ll be in a world of shit if you don’t me out right now.”

  The man only laughed. “It seems to me that you’re not really in any position to be making demands.” He stopped to laugh again and then she could hear his footsteps directly over her.

  “My partner will come looking for me,” she said.

  “Oh, I don’t intend for you to be here for long,” he said.

  “Well, you can’t take me to one of your storage units. We’ve made sure all of them are either closed or under surveillance.”

  There was a moment’s pause before he responded. “Ah, that’s fine. I was getting to the end of that, anyway. Running out of places, you know.”

  There’s an admission, Mackenzie thought, doing her best to keep her cool. But she was also unnerved by how casually he spoke. She wondered how much more she could get him to admit to.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she said “Make it easy on yourself. Let me out and we’ll figure out how to get you a fair deal.”

  Again, he laughed. “I think what I’ve been doing puts any hope of a fair deal well outside of my grasp.”

  Mackenzie tried to think of the best approach to use to reason with him. He sounded reasonable—of a sound mind. And he was almost boastful in the way he spoke about the things he had done. She wondered if there was a way to use that to her advantage.

  While she waited to see what the killer’s next move would be, she finally fished out her flashlight. Seeing no sense in causing undue stress on her back and knees, she sat down on the floor of the pit. She turned the flashlight on and pointed it into the dark crawlspace.

  And nearly screamed.

  There was a body lying about five feet away from her. It had been wrapped in an old tarp, but its legs and its head had come out. A set of dead eyes stared at her, channels of dried blood having cascaded between them down the bridge of the nose. It was a male, somewhere in his mid-twenties. It was a huge guess on her part, but Mackenzie thought this would likely turn out to be Brian Dixon.

  “You know…we’re at a stalemate here, you and I,” he said. “I know you have a gun. But I want to let you out of there. I really do. So what do you suppose we do?”

  Mackenzie was listening intently to him, his voice muffled and hollow-sounding through the hatch door. Her world consisted of the little beam of her flashlight and so far all her world contained was herself and a corpse.

  She fumbled for her cell phone, managing to dig it out of her pocket with the hand not holding the flashlight. She saw that she had one bar of signal, flickering in and out. She’d had a weak signal the entire way here, but not this bad. She wondered if it was simply being in the building, under the floor. Undeterred, she ignored the signal, hoping for the best. She pulled up her text messages and tapped on the thread with Ellington. She entered the address and added: In old shed or auto garage. Trapped. Killer is here. Help.

  She pressed send. The progress bar sped ahead at the top of the message and then stopped a third of the way. She stared at it as if willing it to continue, but it remained the same. She placed the phone on the ground at her feet, knowing that she could not distract herself with it.

  “You still with me?” he asked from above. “You went quiet. Did you pass out?”

  “No. I’m here. And yes, I have a gun. But believe me…my job requires that I try to arrest you—to take you in. I have no intention of shooting you.”

  “That might be so,” he responded. “But I don’t know you so I sure as hell don’t trust you. I h
ave a better idea. I assume you’re here looking for the man that killed all those people…the man that stuck all the bodies in the storage units. What if I told you I could tell you where the newest one is?”

  “Her name is Daisy Walker,” Mackenzie said. “You killed her boyfriend, Brian Dixon.”

  “Yeah, that’s him down there with you. And honestly, I don’t care about their names. Am I supposed to be impressed that you know that much? If you were worth a damn at your job, you would have caught me by now. I mean…I even had to leave you hints to find one of the bodies.”

  Mackenzie felt rage bubbling up but stomped it down. She had to stay cool and reasonable. He was talking, and that was good. She could buy herself some time. Or, rather, she could buy more time for Ellington to get her text if the fucking thing ever went through.

  A thought then occurred to her. Ellington with Rising, locating Brian Dixon’s cell phone. If the phone was still on Dixon…

  She slid over to the body and slowly started to unfold the tarp. The space was tight, so it was difficult but she managed to do it, albeit slowly. While she did so, the killer continued to speak.

  “Here’s what we’ll do. You hand over your gun and I’ll tell you where the girl is. I won’t lie…she’s bleeding. I stabbed her just like the others. Some last a day…some last almost a week. So it’s anyone’s guess, really. After all…I have a gun, too. Maybe you know the agent who I shot yesterday…”

  “You missed,” she snapped, unable to keep it in. You were that close and you missed him. He’s still very much alive. He’s my partner…and all you did was piss him off.”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  He went quiet after this, apparently thinking things over. Mackenzie took that opportunity to continue unfolding the tarp. When the waist of the corpse’s pants were exposed, she reached into the pockets. In the front right pocket, she found a wallet. In the back right she felt the familiar rectangular shape of a cell phone. She took it out and pressed the unlock button on the side. While she obviously didn’t know the code, she saw all she needed to see. The phone still had fifteen percent of its battery remaining—more than enough to stay alive long enough for Ellington and Rising to triangulate on it.