Chad shut the door when we were all inside. He tightly folded his arms.
“I’m not sure what you…I stick to myself.” Chad walked backward into the living room.
We followed.
I did a visual swoop of the area. Everything had its place. There wasn’t a sign of dust anywhere. This didn’t fit with the profile of our unsub, who was apparently falling apart, but it did match the condition of Keyes’s cabin. The furniture was from a big-box store but modest and fairly new looking. There was a large flat screen TV that took up residence at one end of the room.
“We have a few questions for you.” Jack didn’t wait for the invitation to take a seat but lowered onto a nearby sofa.
I didn’t follow his lead but walked around the edge of the room toward a staircase that led to an upper floor.
“I stick to myself.” Chad repeated.
I detected strain to his voice. He came at me in a few long strides. Inches from my face, he studied my eyes, scanning left to right, right to left.
“What are you doing? What are you looking for?”
I lifted my shoulders. “Nothing really.”
“Good then, ’cause you won’t find anything.”
The exhale of hmm burned to eject from the back of my throat. I fought not giving birth to my mentor’s audible expulsion of thought. There was one thing Chad didn’t realize—when he studied my eyes, I studied his in return. He was hiding something, but whether it was the abduction and murder of many women, I wasn’t sure. Yet.
I resumed walking and went into the kitchen. Like the rest of the house, it was modest and kept clean and tidy. No dishes, clean or dirty, were in the sink or on any counters. Everything, again, had its place. I was turning around to come back into the living room when I noticed the door to the right of kitchen. It could be a pantry, but I didn’t think it was. I twisted the knob and cracked the door slightly when Chad put a hand on mine.
“You’re not going to snoop…what am I guilty…I don’t see a warrant.”
We stood there for a few seconds, frozen in place, watching each other closely, trying to anticipate the next move. I let go of the handle.
“No, you’re right.” I passed him a fake smile and went back to the living room. I remained standing.
Chad stood at the edge of the room. “I think it’s time for you guys to leave.”
“Just a few questions.” Jack gestured across to a chair.
“One minute only. I have things I have to do today.” Chad dropped down on the arm of the chair. His hand slapped his thigh in a soft, even rhythm.
Tappity, tap. Tappity, tap.
“You worked for Fitness Guru up until recently,” Jack said.
“Yeah, until they—I was the best trainer they had.” Chad shook his head. “Stupid, stupid mistake…they lost their best employee. But there will be other jobs.”
“It seems you have held a lot of jobs.”
Anger flashed over Chad’s eyes. “I just haven’t found the right place. When I think I have…they don’t appreciate me. They don’t deserve me. Why are you here? I doubt it’s about…I remit my taxes.”
“That part’s the Internal Revenue Service, nothing to do with us. We’re here because these three women went to Fitness Guru.” Jack extended photos of Leslie Keyes, Sydney Poole, and Nina Harris. “Did you ever have contact with them?”
Chad remained quiet.
“I’d suggest you answer honestly. He can get pretty nasty if you piss him off,” I said.
Jack’s resultant condemnation burned as if a laser beam were aimed at the side of my head. I refused to let him know I sensed the chastisement.
“I knew this one.” Chad pointed to the picture of Leslie Keyes. “She was the owner’s wife.”
Neither Jack nor I interjected any comments. We wanted Chad to keep talking. If there were something in regards to her abduction that he was hiding, there was a chance it might slip out.
“She went missing, if I remember right, didn’t she? Well, it was really hard on all of us.”
“You were close to her?” Jack asked.
His question met with a shoulder shrug. “She was just really intelligent.”
“Intelligent? Most guys will say a girl’s got a great ass or a beautiful face.”
“See, she had that too. Leslie was the complete package.” He moved from the arm of the chair onto the cushion. “She had a way of making you smile even when you didn’t feel like it.”
“You had a thing for the boss’s wife?” I smiled at him, mischievously playing up on the allure while it was really laid as bait.
Chad nodded. “That’s probably the real reason Keyes fired me.”
“You worked there a long time after her disappearance,” Jack said. “I’m sure he never even knew about your attraction.”
“Oh, I think he did. He kept me close by to watch me.”
His words made me think back to the file when Leslie was first reported as missing. No one was named as a potential suspect in her disappearance. If Brad Keyes held any suspicion of Chad Holmes, why not mention it before now? It confirmed at least one thing—Holmes held an elevated opinion of himself.
“Do you know of anyone who could have abducted Leslie?” I asked.
Tappity, tap. Tappity, tap.
“She probably ran away to get free of Keyes. He didn’t treat her right.”
“He hit her? They had a child together.”
“Children do not a family make.” Chad brushed his one cheek against a shoulder. “Sorry, my love of literary art sometimes seizes me.”
Although I worked on writing a novel and considered myself to be somewhat influenced by the greats, his garble was nothing that I recognized. When I did a visual sweep of the house, there were no bookshelves. Even in the electronic age of e-readers, dedicated readers had paperbacks around, maybe a few hardcover books. I tucked this fact away.
“Well, thank you for your time.” I rose to my feet, and received a corrective glance from Jack who normally was the one to call an end to interrogations.
“Any time.”
“And don’t worry about getting up, we’ll let ourselves out.”
“What the hell do you think you just did in there?” Jack slammed the driver’s door. The energy emanating from him could have started a forest fire.
“We need to do more digging on that guy. Something is definitely not right with him.” I would defend that thought to the point of staking my career on it.
“He liked the woman. We have nothing more right now, and we don’t because you got your ego into the equation.”
Paige and Zachery turned their heads to follow our conversation.
“Ego? This has nothing to do with it. I’m not trying to prove my—”
“You’re always trying to prove yourself. It’s what you do.”
His words bit. Paige sank farther into the leather seat beside me.
“He had someone there with him.”
Jack adjusted the rearview mirror so it was focused on me.
“He spoke of his love of literary art, but there were no books in his house.”
“That you could see,” Jack said.
“That I could see. I suppose he could have them upstairs in an office or study. Maybe he reads in his bedroom.”
“Speculation. That’s all you have.”
“It’s a place to start and more than we’ve had so far, don’t you think?” Anger rose within and I feared I wouldn’t be able to tamp it down.
Jack put the car into gear. “You said he had someone there? How would you know that?”
“I heard a shower running on the second floor when I was standing at the base of the stairs.”
Jack stuck a lit cigarette in his mouth. “It could have been anyone.”
I let out a deep breath. “What do we know about our unsub? He’s egotistical—” I paused, half expecting Jack to comment on how I should recognize my trait in others. He didn’t. Now I was disciplining myself. “He’s
attractive to women. He’s driven to prove himself. Those are just a few aspects. Chad ticks off each one of them. He has guilt, at least to some degree, over Leslie going missing. He said that Keyes kept him around to keep an eye on him, but that was Chad’s viewpoint, not Keyes’s. Not once has Keyes mentioned a concern with Chad when it came to his missing wife.” The words gave birth in a quick rush and sat in the open without comment for at least twenty seconds. “And did you notice how he talked? His sentences were fragmented.”
“That is one side effect of auditory hallucinations,” Zachery said.
“He never smiled either, even when talking about how wonderful Leslie was,” I added, knowing it was another strong indicator.
Jack inhaled from the cigarette, suctioning around it audibly, and the smoke was let out in a puff. “We’ll do more digging on this guy and go from there.”
Chad wanted to watch the cops pull away and leave. Cops, feds, they were all the same to him. Either could put him away for life and take away his freedom. He resisted the urge to make sure they were gone, to confirm they’d left him in their rearview mirror.
His heart raced, and he was lightheaded. What if they called in for backup?
He ran up the stairs, taking two at a time. Opening the bathroom door, he crossed to the tub where he had secured His Angel. He couldn’t risk her freeing herself and exposing them. He had done too much, come too far.
No, they would finally be together, for good this time.
He pulled the shower curtain back. The water poured over her flesh, as a cleansing rain. Beads of moisture kissed her skin. He followed the path of the water as it streamed down her chest, over a breast and off the nipple. She was perfect.
His eyes traced her form. She sat in the tub with her back against the end, opposite the faucet—he was too smart to let her drown. Her arms were secured behind her back with a necktie. He had wrapped another around her head and over her mouth to serve as a gag. He didn’t think it was necessary, based on the drug he had also put in her system when he heard the doorbell, but it was a precaution. He didn’t need an off-chance ruining this moment.
Her eyes were shut, and she was in a deep sleep, evidenced by the rapid eye movement beneath her lids.
Kill her!
He squeezed his eyes shut.
The voice that would never completely disappear—it would haunt him until the day he closed his eyes for the final time. But he would learn to live with it, to ignore it. Things were finally the way they were meant to be.
He reached for the soap and lathered it over her body. Despite the warm water and the heat of his touch, her body shivered in response.
She would come to realize they were meant to be together, and there was nothing she should fear.
When she was bathed, he shut off the water and left the bathroom. He returned with the perfect outfit for her. As he re-entered, her eyes flickered open, squinting at first, likely in objection to the bright light in the room, but he left it on. He had something for her to see, something for her to wear, before they headed out. This was the reason he had to bring her here, and it would be worth it.
“For you.” He extended the white dress, holding a shoulder strap in each hand, as if she could get up to reach for it. He pinched the embroidered daises beneath his fingers. “You will look beautiful in this. This I know.”
Chapter 44
Paige and Zachery were going to get what they could together on Monica Rice while Jack and I headed to talk to Brad Keyes again. We were hoping, by this point, he had put his hands on Chad’s resume, and we would have more to go on then his job history consisting of brief stints.
On the way, he contacted Nadia at headquarters, gave her a push on the employment and financial records, and asked her to dig up anything she could find on Chad Holmes. We waited on the phone while she gave us the basic scoop on him.
“No criminal record,” she said.
“We know that. Give us something we don’t have. Does he have a gun registered? Does he have any other properties?” Jack flicked the butt of his cigarette out the window into passing traffic.
“There’s nothing showing on record. Again, it could just be that—”
“It’s not registered in his name.”
“Yeah.” Nadia let out a rush of air that came across the onboard phone system.
Jack passed me a glance. “Well, keep digging. There’s something there.”
I held back the impulse to smile at this small victory. Jack and the team had been onto Chad Holmes before me, but I was the one convinced, after speaking with him, that he was our guy. Jack was showing faith in my hunches by having Nadia investigate him further. I turned to look out the passenger window before allowing the smile to give birth.
There were two sides to pushing Keyes about Chad, but the risk of damaging a potentially innocent man’s reputation was trumped by the fact that, as of right now, we considered Sydney Poole and Monica Rice to be alive. We needed to find them before that status changed.
Two girls, both different than the one before, and a guy stood at the front desk of Fitness Guru. One of the girls smiled at us as we approached, and the other two employees turned to talk to each other.
The smiling girl’s eyes went to our hands, as if expecting us to pull out a slide key that would give us access to the gym. Jack and I both wore dress pants with collared shirts. We didn’t have a bag strapped over a shoulder. We certainly didn’t appear as if we were here for a workout.
What was it with people who worked in gyms? I had belonged to a few before I decided it was easier, and more convenient, to set things up in my home, but, in my life, I had belonged to a few fitness centers. The employees were usually beautiful and fit, but their brains could have occupied a thimble.
Jack pulled his creds and flashed them to the girl. Her mouth formed an O.
“We’re here to see Brad Keyes.”
She nodded and walked away.
Seconds later, Brad was at the front desk. “I found what you were looking for.” He extended a file folder to Jack.
“We’d like to talk to you as well,” Jack said, passing the folder to me.
Brad glanced at the three employees occupying the front area, but the fact they stood around, mostly socializing, didn’t seem to faze him. “Sure.”
The girl who had retrieved Keyes smiled at us again and gestured for us to come through the entrance.
Brad led us to an office past the area where they signed up new members. Boxes and trays lined shelving behind his desk. A desk calendar and laptop were on the surface of his work space. Two chairs sat tucked in opposite corners of the room. Neither Jack nor I made a move to either one of them. This wouldn’t be a long visit.
Brad dropped into the leather swivel chair and rubbed his hands together. “I’m not sure how else I can help. I just don’t know how much longer I can afford to be a part of this. I can tell by the way you’re looking at me you don’t understand, and that’s fine. But when something horrible like this happens to you, that rips apart your life, as you know it, at some point you have to move forward or risk being paralyzed by it. I chose, a long time ago, to move on.”
He sounded a lot like he had when we first met.
“Did you ever suspect Chad Holmes as being involved with your wife’s disappearance?” Jack asked.
Brad blinked a few times, passed a glance at me, and I read his eyes, asking the question, did he hear anything I said?
“We’re asking because he seems to think you were suspicious of him,” I said. I remembered Chad’s words at his house clearly. He kept me close by to watch me.
Seconds went by in silence. All that could be heard was the soft hum of the fitness equipment. Brad stood up and shut the door.
“I never thought he took her. He didn’t seem like a real threat.” Brad took a deep breath. “I thought he might have been sleeping with her.”
I turned to Jack only to meet with his profile. His attention stayed fixed on Brad.
I noticed the contrasting statements between what he was sharing now and what he had said previously. When we talked at his house, he mentioned he didn’t think his wife was cheating on him, that she never would. Now he was voicing his suspicions. We needed to figure out the reasoning for the conflict, to expose the truth. “Before you—”
“I know what I said. I said that she would never do that to me. Well, I’ve since come to grips with the fact she could have. You have alluded to it, maybe even said it directly. I don’t know anymore.” He paused a second, his tongue touching his bottom lip. “Yes, at the time, I wondered about their relationship. I was mostly jealous of Chad though. I never thought she was capable of it, but, with Chad, I wasn’t so sure. Women always liked him. Leslie liked him. That much was obvious.” His eyes fell to his desk. When we didn’t say anything, he continued. “It’s embarrassing to think your wife, the mother of your newborn child, could have sex with someone else. Shit, we just had a kid together. Were things that bad? It makes you feel like a failure.”
I could relate more than I cared to admit. I swallowed the emotion in a thick wad of salvia. “We can’t control other people and their choices.”
Brad nodded absentmindedly. My words didn’t seem to bring him any comfort.
Chapter 45
Outside Fitness Guru, Jack slid behind the wheel, and I got into the passenger seat.
“That guy doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about,” Jack said.
“He’s going through a lot. His past has resurfaced, and he’s forced to face it.”
Jack looked over at me. His eyes were harder to read than his energy. He thought I was weak for disclosing some empathy. So, convict me for being human. “He’s gone through a lot. He lost the love of his life, he’s a single father, he—”
Silent Graves (Brandon Fisher FBI Series) Page 19
