“So where the hell do we start?” Ellington asked as they got out of the car and rushed to the units.
“With the smaller ones,” Mackenzie said, pointing to the left, near the back side of the property.
There were eight smaller units located at the back of the property. With no other way to eliminate them, Mackenzie had no choice but to try them all one at a time, inserting the key from the killer’s ring into each lock and trying, hoping it would unlock.
The key did not turn until the fifth unit. The key turned fully, rewarding them with a faint click as it disengaged. Ellington pulled the door up quickly, the sound of it like a screeching robot.
Mackenzie had expected a dead body. She’d expected lots of blood and a warm yet lifeless body.
So when the young woman on the concrete floor actually craned her neck up at them and started screaming tiny muffled noises through the gag around her mouth, Mackenzie’s heart swelled. And damn it, she couldn’t help it; she started to cry.
There was indeed lots of blood, but Mackenzie managed to look beyond that. She held eye contact with Daisy Walker, not looking at the stab wound high in her stomach, not looking around the unit to see if there were any dolls or tea party decorations.
“You’re okay, sweetie,” Mackenzie said. “We’ve got you.”
As she did her best to calm Daisy, Ellington removed the gag and the wire that had been bound around her arms. She started to scream in pain—cries so deep and with breaths so ragged that Mackenzie feared she might pass out.
Again, the sound of approaching ambulance sirens sent a flood of relief through her. They were very close, the wails of the sirens growing quickly. Mackenzie remained on the floor of the unit and took Daisy’s hand. Her grip was weak and there were tremors running through her body. But at least she was alive. Mackenzie decided to focus on that fact as the wailing sirens drew closer and Daisy Walker trembled and struggled to stay alive beside her.
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
They followed the ambulance through a mist of rain. Something about the final stages of a case taking place in a hospital was unnerving to Mackenzie but based on the way this case had gone, it seemed almost fitting. They entered the hospital with far too many question marks for Mackenzie to rest comfortably on the day’s success. Deputy Rising was now listed as officially stable, but he had at least two surgeries in his future to repair the damage from the shot that had torn through his chest, missing his heart by less than two inches.
As for Daisy Walker, the paramedics had not been hopeful. When they placed her in the back of the ambulance, Daisy had finally given in and passed out. Her pulse had been incredibly weak and she had been non-responsive. And that was the last that Mackenzie had seen or heard of the young woman’s fate.
As Mackenzie and Ellington walked toward the hospital lobby elevators, Dentry came running up to them. She’d apparently been sitting in the waiting area, wanting to grab them as soon as they came in.
“The doctors cleared the suspect for interrogation about five minutes ago,” Dentry said. “The shot was clean and they fixed it up quickly. As soon as he was given the okay, the suspect asked to talk to Agent White.”
“Me specifically?” she asked.
“Not by name. He asked to speak with the agent that found him—the agent he trapped down in the dark. That was how he put it.”
“Where is he?”
“You don’t have to do what he says,” Ellington said.
“It’s okay. I want to. I think I need to.” What she didn’t say, but was thinking, was: I need to understand.
“Second floor, in a secured room,” Dentry said.
Dentry got on the elevator with them and took it up to the second floor. Mackenzie instantly saw the police guard stationed outside of a room near the end of the hallway. She wasted no time in heading that way.
“Mac,” Ellington said softly as they approached. “Don’t push yourself. If he starts getting to you, you come out and—”
She stopped him here by stepping close to him. She gave him a small hug, not caring that Dentry was right there beside them. She lightly kissed him on the side of the head, just below his earlobe, and whispered in his ear. “I’m pregnant.”
She wasn’t sure why she chose that moment to tell him. It seemed like those two words almost answered any questions he had about why she felt the need to speak with the killer. She had to understand. She had to get a better understanding of men that did evil and atrocious things if she was going to bring a child into this world.
When she pulled back, Ellington was clearly shocked. But there were the faintest traces of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah?” he said.
She smiled and nodded. And without saying another word, she went into the suspect’s hospital room.
***
“The doctor says you’re a good shot,” the killer said as she walked into the room. He was sitting on the edge of a hospital bed with his right arm handcuffed to the rail. “He said it was a perfectly clean shot that could have killed me if it had strayed four inches or so further down.”
She ignored this and took a seat in the visitor’s chair. “Officer Dentry said you wanted to talk to me.”
“I do. I wanted to know how you found me.”
“I want to know your name. Your real name. Not Mark Riley.”
He smiled and shook his head.
“It doesn’t matter. We have your car. We’ll have it soon.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“The dolls,” Mackenzie said. She recalled the way he had freely talked when he’d had her trapped. Maybe she could coerce him into slipping up and revealing more than he intended. “I figured out where you purchased them from. And the woman that owns the place had kept the address you gave her.” She considered something for a moment and then added: “Did you know what you were going to do when you bought them?”
“I had the idea in my head.”
“Why do it?” Mackenzie asked. She felt herself beginning to get emotional but used every ounce of willpower within her to keep it down. She was not going to let this man see her cry.
“I wish I could tell you. It was cathartic. All of it. The abductions, the wounding, knowing that I had caused someone to suffer…to die slowly. And as I say it…yes, I understand how messed up and twisted it sounds. But it…it helped.”
“And the dolls and the tea party?”
He seemed to think about this for a moment but then shook his head. He looked at her with a bit of a sneer. “That’s private,” he said.
“You were in Salem, Oregon, too, right?” Mackenzie asked. “That brings your total to ten. That’s right…ten. Daisy Walker would have been eleven, but we found her in time. No thanks to you.”
“I wanted to talk to you because you were down there…down in the dark, in the pit,” he said. “And you handled it well. It seemed not to bother you. How did you do it?”
She wasn’t sure what sort of answer he was looking for. She could easily recall being down there, stranded and alone in the dark (well, not entirely alone if you counted Brian Dixon’s dead body).
“How did you do it?” Mackenzie asked. “How did you end these lives and cause so much pain and death and not care?”
“You don’t think I cared?” he asked, as if offended. “Oh, I cared a great deal. But…like I said: It was the only thing that helped.”
“Helped what?”
He got that angry look in his eyes again. It almost made him look like a frustrated child who could not get his way. “That’s private,” he said again.
As Mackenzie tried to think of some other way to get answers from him, there was a knock at the door. She saw Ellington there, beckoning her outside. She left the killer and joined Ellington and Dentry in the hallway. There were two others with them now, one man and one woman, dressed in a way that made Mackenzie assume they were the local field agents. Middle-of-the-line suits that looked a little too casual to be high end.
“
These are Agents Smith and Gonzalez,” Ellington said. “They just got a call with just about everything we could need to know about the suspect.”
“It just took tracing down his car registration and plates,” the man said, his mildly Hispanic complexion making Mackenzie assume he was Agent Gonzalez.
“And it’s not pretty,” Smith said. She read from her phone, apparently either a text or email that had just been sent directly to her. “Suspect’s name is Aiden Childress. Born in Sacramento, California, where, at the age of eight, he was placed into foster care after his mother was sentenced to time in a mental institution after being found guilty of killing her daughter. The daughter was five years old at the time and she died right in front of Aiden. An investigation showed that the mother poisoned the water they were using to have little pretend tea parties. During the trial, she claimed she only intended to make her daughter sick enough to continue getting government assistance for medical bills.
“But it wasn’t the first time she’d been in trouble for such a thing. The father, a year previous, had been arrested for child neglect and child abuse. Both children were found locked inside dog crates while the father was doing drugs in the bedroom with a woman that was not his wife. A legal battle for custody ensued, as the mother worked hard to keep her children from going into the system. She won, but it only lasted a year. That’s when she killed her daughter.”
“Anywhere in there indicate that Aiden Childress ever lived in or around Salem, Oregon?” Mackenzie asked.
Smith scanned the message and stopped after a few seconds, clearly shocked. “Yes, actually. I’ve got records of parking tickets and a permanent residence for a period of about eight years.”
Mackenzie looked back into the room and saw Aiden Childress, still sitting on the edge of the bed. He had a very patient look on his face, one that seemed to be studying his surroundings and taking it all in while he waited for Mackenzie to return.
But she wasn’t going back in there. Agents Smith and Gonzalez had found the answers she had been looking for. And sadly, it was something she had seen far too many times. The evil in the hearts of men didn’t just materialize overnight. Far too often it was almost genetic, passed down through traumas and violent events the same as a likelihood of male pattern baldness or a tendency toward alcoholism.
But she recalled being down in that pit and how Childress had looked down into it. And then his comments moments ago: You handled it well. It seemed not to bother you. How did you do it?
Picturing him as a young boy locked in a dog crate made the question make more sense. And sadly, so did his little games with the dolls and the tea party. And despite all that she had seen in the storage units, the most telling scene had been in the doghouse out by his house. Those dolls, sitting around eternally, waiting for someone to come to their tea party.
It sent a chill through her…one that remained and turned into goosebumps. And once more, she felt herself on the edge of tears.
“Thanks, Agents,” she said. “Would you mind beginning to process him? When you do, make a formal request to have records pulled from Salem, Oregon, for similar murders.”
“Absolutely,” Gonzalez said.
With that, Mackenzie started down the hall. She felt Ellington fall in beside her and that meant the world to her. He took her hand and they went to the second-floor waiting room at the end of the hall. There, they sat down together and Ellington drew her close. She wept against his shoulder and it felt good to finally let it out.
She was going to be a mother. She was going to bring life into a world where parents mistreated their children—where those same children grew up to commit senseless acts in an effort to make sense of their pasts. It was mostly an evil world…something that Mackenzie had not really believed before. She’d always tried to see the good in it all but it was damned hard after meeting someone like Aiden Childress face to face.
But she knew there was good. That there was light in the darkness. It came in unexpected ways sometimes, like taking a pregnancy test in a convenience store bathroom and having your life forever changed.
“So you’re pregnant, huh?” Ellington said as her sobs died down.
“Yeah.”
And to prove once again that he knew her well, inside and out, his next comment not only set her at ease, but reminded her of why she loved him so fiercely.
“In that case, do you mind if we wait to have the wedding when you’re like eight months along and really showing? It’ll make my mother insane.”
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
She’d heard about morning sickness from movies, TV shows, and a few friends back in Nebraska, so Mackenzie had been expecting the worst. But hitting the nine-week mark following her first OB visit, she hadn’t experienced it at all. She was suffering from pretty severe mood swings, which at least explained her behavior in Seattle. But back in DC, the mood swings got slightly worse. Partly because she was back in the part of the world where her upcoming wedding was a hot topic and partly because Ellington was so excited about their recent turn of events.
At work, she kept tabs on how things were turning out back in Seattle with the Aiden Childress case. Five days after they returned home, she received a call from Rising. He had one surgery still scheduled but was doing well. He was back at home but would not be able to return to work for at least another three months.
She learned all of this one day after lunch, sitting in her office. Rising had called her cell phone and when she saw his name on the display, she’d answered right away with a smile. He’d filled her in as best he could and gave his sincere thanks for the way she and Ellington had wrapped the case.
“But I didn’t call to talk about me,” Rising said. “I thought you’d want to know that Daisy Walker is going to pull through. The wound to her stomach caused some intestinal damage and she lost a lot of blood. Those two things together resulted in a nasty infection, but as of this morning, the doctors are saying things look quite promising.”
“That’s great news,” Mackenzie said. “Do we know anything new about Aiden Childress?”
“He’s been officially arrested and right now is being held in the secure wing of a maximum security prison. I haven’t talked much about it with anyone, but from what I understand, he’d likely get some sort of psychiatric flexibility when it comes to his trial. Based on his history…”
“Yeah, I expected that.”
“Anyway…again, thanks so much for your help. I do need to warn you that Mrs. Shelby Walker is dying to get your number. She’s incredibly grateful that you were able to save her daughter.”
She thought of Mrs. Walker and how she had sat like a sentinel on her porch, waiting for news of her daughter. It was a thought that made Mackenzie look down to her stomach—still flat and looking perfectly normal—with a smile. And although things with Aiden Childress had gotten darker and darker the more they learned about his past, the possibilities growing within her made Mackenzie start to think that there was more light and promise in the world than she had originally thought.
***
In the dream, she was in the pit again. Her flashlight was on but its light was red. As she traced the shape of the pit, she saw dolls lined up against the walls. And there, against the back, a bassinet that was overflowing with blood.
A voice whispered in her ear as a hand caressed her shoulder. “You think you can really handle that?”
She turned and saw her father sitting in the darkness with her, his face painted in that same red light. But he was not dead or injured or bleeding the way he had been in all of the previous dreams she’d had about him. He was perfectly fine. He was smiling at her and his touch on her shoulder was reassuring.
“I think I can, Dad. Yes, I do.”
“Then do it,” he said. “Get your ass out of this darkness and do it.”
Mackenzie awoke with a start. She sat up in bed and looked around the room. The whisper of her father’s voice was still in her mind and it made her miss
him for the first time in a long time.
“You okay?” Ellington murmured from beside her in bed.
“Yeah. Just a dream.”
“Bad one?”
“Not too bad. Maybe even good.”
He rolled over and gently placed his hand on her stomach. “Good. You deserve a few of those from time to time.”
She lay back down with his hand still on her stomach. He’d been doing that a lot lately, on the couch while watching TV, in bed, passing each other in the kitchen.
As selfish as it seemed, she thought he was right. They both deserved to have good dreams on occasion. Because if all there was to be had were bad dreams, what did that say about the world?
She closed her eyes again, resting her hand on top of Ellington’s. She drifted off with a head full of hopes and dreams for the life being created beneath their hands.
NOW AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER!
BEFORE HE LAPSES
(A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 11)
From Blake Pierce, #1 bestselling author of ONCE GONE (a #1 bestseller with over 1,200 five star reviews), comes BEFORE HE LAPSES, book #11 in the heart-pounding Mackenzie White mystery series.
BEFORE HE LAPSES is book #11 in the bestselling Mackenzie White mystery series, which begins with BEFORE HE KILLS (Book #1), a free download with over 500 five-star reviews!
FBI Special Agent Mackenzie White, six months pregnant, calls off her formal wedding with Ellington and they elope instead. On their honeymoon, they finally have some downtime together—when a call comes in for an urgent case: women are being strangled at a rapid rate in the D.C. area by what appears to be a serial killer. Even more disturbing: this killer is so meticulous that he leaves absolutely no trace.
Mackenzie White 10-Before He Longs Page 19
