Head Start (Cedar Tree #7)

by Freya Barker

  “On my way.”

  Slipping the phone back in my jeans, I quickly finish installing the upgraded firewall and log off. With one look back at the still closed door of her treatment room, I pull her office door shut and head for the front desk, where Naomi is just showing her patient out.

  “You done?”

  “Didn’t take much,” I tell her. “Yours is up and running, was just a glitch with the automatic updates, and Kendra’s is cleaned up. She’s still in with Mrs. Winkler so I’ll catch up with her later.”

  “Thanks, Neil.” She smiles at me and it hits me again how fucking lucky my colleagues at GFI are. Every last one of them has found their match and are building a future. Fuck, how I want that. I’ll admit, I’ve had fun sowing my wild oats, but I’m long since done with that. Left that part of my life behind when I came here from Grand Junction, but every good woman who has crossed my path has been snatched up from under my nose before I had a chance to make a move. And the one I’ve wanted most since meeting her is determined to keep me at a distance. Fuck, I almost lost a good friend to this stupid hang up of hers.

  I shake my head to clear the frustration and bend down to kiss Naomi’s cheek. “No problem, Doc. I’ve gotta run, though, duty calls.” With a two-fingered wave, I step out of the clinic and into the warm spring sunshine. Damn, it’s going to be good being able to get out again. The Cedar Tree winters can be brutal and make the terrain traitorous but with this warmer weather, I can’t wait for a chance to try out my new ATV on the trails.

  I’m at Gus and Emma’s place, also the GFI main office, five minutes later. It takes that long to get from one end of town to the other. I used to think I’d need a larger place to keep me busy, but since my first trip to Cedar Tree, it has never been boring. For a small town like this, they sure see a lot of action, which is why Gus—after our fist case here—moved the office from Grand Junction to here. Of course the fact that that first case netted him his wife, Emma, helped make that decision. During the first years, I stayed mostly in Grand Junction to run the office there with Dana, our office manager and resident mother. But she has since retired and Gus decided to close down that office. I started out in the guesthouse behind their house, but have recently moved into the apartment above the local diner, Arlene’s. She and her husband Seb have become good friends, as have all the other members of the GFI team. Two more members have been added since the office opened. Joe Morris, Naomi’s husband and the former sheriff of Montezuma County, and Mal Whitetail, Caleb’s brother. Of course Caleb and his wife, Katie, have both been operatives longer than I have.

  By the looks of the cars assembled in the driveway, everyone has been called in. When I walk in the door, the unmistakable smell of something baking greets me. Emma, Gus’s wife, is our resident baker and will use any damn excuse to shove a pie or some pastries in the oven, even an emergency GFI meet.

  She leans against the counter, wiping her hands on her apron and wearing a big ass smile. “Hey handsome.”

  “Hey.” I smile back. “I swear, if Gus didn’t force us to hit the gym at least twice a week to stay in shape, you’d have all of us sporting guts with your need to feed.”

  Emma flaps her hand. “Whatever, it’s just a few cinnamon rolls. Looks like you guys might be in there for a while and I didn’t have time to make soup for lunch. Gus just got the call forty-five minutes ago. You better get in there.”

  I wrap an arm around her neck and pull her close, planting a kiss on her fiery mop of auburn curls. “You’re the best, Ems.”

  “Coffee in the boardroom,” she yells after me when I turn into the hallway attaching the kitchen to the addition in the back which holds the GFI offices.

  “Neil, good. Sit. FBI is gonna be here in fifteen and I want to get you guys up to speed.” Gus sits at the head of the massive boardroom table with my partners seated along the sides. I slip into a vacant chair beside Katie, giving her a wink as I sit down.

  “Damian Gomez, as you know, is now leading the field office for La Plata County. He called in asking for our help. He’s short on staff, been working almost single-handedly on the disappearance of a number of women from this general area.”

  “How general?” Joe pipes up. He’s the one with all the law-enforcement connections and I can hear the wheels turning. Gus turns to him.

  “For now, limited to La Plata County, but with feelers out further. Once he brings in copies of what he has, we can talk about what it is we’re looking for in terms of matching cases up with other jurisdictions. I can confirm that there are five women missing. All are between twenty-five and forty years of age. Four were single, one married. As of this morning, three bodies have been found. Two had been there for a while. One was fresh, which makes number six. A hiker who was out early this morning stumbled on the bodies when he tripped and slid off the trail and down a twelve-foot ridge. He found them at the bottom, between a pile of sizable boulders. According to Damian, they looked to have been dumped there. The latest victim appears to have been there only a few days at most. Police is looking at getting her identified. All appear to be women.” Gus stands up, turns to the window and runs his hand through his hair. “We’ve had our share of trouble in this region, but if Damian is correct, this could be the first serial killer of this caliber since fucking Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgeway made Colorado unsafe.”

  “Have mercy,” Mal breathes from the other side of the table.

  “No shit. We’ll need it,” his brother Caleb adds.

  The door opens and Emma pushes her walker in, a tray of sandwiches and the freshly baked cinnamon buns balancing on top. Behind her, FBI Special Agent Damian Gomez walks in, toting a case of bottled water and a stack of files.

  “She got you working?” Gus smirks, looking at his wife appreciatively. He and Damian go back a ways, and not all of it very good, but in recent months, since Damian’s taken over the Durango office, things between them have been more amicable.

  Damian’s grudging smile and raised eyebrow is his only response. Mal takes the tray from Emma and sets it on the table, while Damian adds the case of water.

  “Thanks, Damian.” Emma smiles up at him, leaning in to give him a kiss on the cheek, something that obviously surprises him and stirs up Gus, whose low guttural growl can be heard clearly. “Oh geeze, Gus.” She turns on her husband, one hand on her walker for balance, the other resting on her hip. “Put your balls away, will ya? We all know they are exceptionally large. Now eat!” With that, she shuffles out of the room.

  Gus shakes his head, unable to keep the smirk off his face. “Well. Now that that’s been established, grab something to eat and let’s get this show on the road. I’ll just be one minute,” Gus says, as he stalks out the door behind Emma. Most of us have a knowing grin on our faces, except for Damian, who looks a bit confused.

  “Just go with it,” Katie tells him with a wink as she offers him a bottle of water. By the time Damian is done giving everyone a file folder, Gus comes walking back in, a satisfied look on his face.

  “All right,” Damian starts. “Six missing women, three bodies recovered this morning. The latest one, Cora Jennings, was a nurse at Mercy General in Durango. The report on her was only filed this morning by her supervisor at Mercy. She apparently had a date two days ago, didn’t show up the next day and when her supervisor couldn’t get a hold of her, she went to check her apartment. The woman’s car was gone and no one answered the door. Durango PD is over there now waiting for the landlord to show up with the key so they can get in. We suspect the third body found on Smelter Mountain was that of Cora. It hadn’t been out there long. All bodies were partially dressed. Looks like their clothes were neatly cut open along the front. They look to have been violated and the cause of death appears to be strangulation. The coroner will make a report, hopefully by the end of today, on the latest victim. He’ll also be able to confirm her identity, but we’re pretty sure it’s Cora.” He sits back and gives us time to scan over the pages in the file.
>
  “Jesus,” Joe says. “Are we sure, aside from the bodies of course, that all six of them fell victim to the same perp? Better yet, are we sure six is all there is?”

  “That’s where I’m hoping you guys can help out. Other than the three bodies, I don’t even know for sure the others, still technically listed as missing, are connected. I need someone to run a ViCAP search, see if any similar cases might be linked, and then follow up with whatever police department. Then I need sharp eyes on patterns, similarities, anything in the victims’ profiles that overlaps. Anything that may give us a starting point on this guy.” Damian gets up and checks his watch. “I have to run. Autopsy scheduled in an hour and a half and I want to be there. I’ll be in touch.” With that he’s gone.

  “Have a bad feeling about this one.” Mal is the first to speak.

  “Right,” Gus breaks in. “Neil, you run ViCAP.”

  “I’m on it,” I tell him, my laptop already open to the sign in page.

  “The rest of you, run through the files you have and start digging for similarities.”

  Katie is shifting in her seat beside me. “I may have found one,” she says, flipping back and forth between the profiles of the six women. “All of them appear to work in the medical field in one capacity or another.”

  I grab the file and shift through the papers. Sure enough, a pharmaceutical rep, two nurses, a medical secretary at a private clinic, an anesthesiologist and an ultra-sound technician.

  Gus gets up, walks to the dry erase board on the far wall and starts writing. “Neil, add that to your search and include all of the Four Corners region. Joe, make a note of all the reporting officers on each of these profiles and find out as much as you can about each of these victims. Mal, I want you to follow Gomez back to Durango. Get any information that comes out of that autopsy and keep us up to date. I want you to be our eyes and ears there. The rest of you, keep going through these files with a fine-tooth comb. Going just by what we have, this guy has been at it for over a year. God knows how many are out there. Let’s stop that fucker now.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kendra

  I almost drop my groceries on the doorstep, trying to balance the paper bags on one arm, while digging frantically through my purse to find my keys. The phone I forgot on the counter when I left to get some groceries is insistently ringing on the other side of the door.

  “Hang on, dagnabit,” I mumble under my breath, as I finally pull free my key ring and wiggle the quirky lock on my door. Stumbling over a few packing boxes, I manage only to lose the containers of yogurt that were balancing precariously on top of my bag of veggies before I make it to the counter where I dump the bags and snatch up my phone.

  “Hello?”

  Dead air. I almost hang up when I hear a deep sigh on the other side.

  “Am I interrupting something?” Neil’s all too familiar voice has my heart suddenly racing for another reason altogether.

  “I should be so lucky,” flies from my mouth before I can slap on a filter. I’m so glad he can’t see the pained look on my face as I literally bite my tongue—hard. The soft chuckle does nothing to settle my sudden nerves.

  “You know that can easily be resolved, right?” he coos, immediately sending a tingle down to my toes.

  “Ha!” is the only intelligible word I can form before shaking my head and determinedly changing the subject. “I just walked in with groceries and had forgotten my phone at home. What’s up?”

  All I hear on the other side is a sharp hiss.

  “You know it’s becoming more and more difficult not to find double meaning in everything you say.” Before I can give that a response, he continues, “I just wanted to check in with you about the move. You were supposed to call me with a place and time?”

  Shit. I know I was and I’d been postponing, having reconsidered the wisdom of letting him help me move. I mean, it’s not like I have a lot of stuff. It would only take me three or four trips in my little SUV. The couch and the bed would be a bit of a problem, though. “I know. I’m sorry, it’s been a bit of a hectic week. It’s this coming Saturday, but you know what? I can probably manage.” And I would. Somehow.

  “Yeah, I’ve been busy too. Would’ve called you earlier but this case... Let’s just say it’s intense. So give me the address and what time do you want me there?” He totally disregards my last remark and I figure it’ll probably be less of a headache to let him help than it would be to try and deter him.

  “I can make sure I have everything packed up, and the bed dissembled the night before. So let’s say nine o’clock?”

  “Where are you gonna sleep?”

  “Not sure what you mean.”

  “If you’re taking apart your bed Friday night, then where are you gonna sleep?” he asks, and I can hear the smile in his voice.

  “Oh. On the mattress on the floor.”

  “Right,” he chuckles. “You know I can help with that too.”

  “I’ll have you know I’ve been able to sleep by myself for forty years, I think I’ll manage,” I blurt out a little irritated. The guy is relentless.

  “Kendra? I meant disassembling the bed.”

  “Oh.” I need to get off the phone before I make an even bigger ass of myself. “No need. I’ve done it before. So, is nine okay for you?”

  “I’ll bring coffee,” he says simply before hanging up.

  I drop the phone on the counter and bang my head a few times. Why is that man so persistent? I can’t seem to get through to him that I am probably ten years older than he is; way too old for him. More importantly, he’s way too young for me. I’ve seen up close and personal how these May-December relationships work. Always explosive in nature, and short in duration. My mother was an expert. The first five years after my father passed away when I was only twelve, Mom never dated. A beautiful woman, she didn’t lack for suitors but she would swear high and low that my father had been her one true love and she wasn’t interested in anyone else. It was the commitment she had an issue with. Most men her age were looking for a wife, and she was not on the market. I was in my senior year in high school when she overheard one of my male friends call her a MILF. I about gagged. When Mom asked what it meant, I was going to make something up, but my then ten-year-old sister was all too eager to explain. Finding out she was attractive to younger men opened up a new world for her. One where marriage and building a long-term future were not expected, but in fact avoided as much as possible. I hit college and it was like my mother was given new life. She used every excuse in the book to come visit me, just so she could check out the male college population. Needless to say, she developed a reputation fairly quickly, to my absolute horror. I didn’t date through college, the risks of going out with someone my mother had already slept with was too big. Besides, my sister was fast following in my mother’s footsteps, and at fourteen had had more boyfriends than me at twenty-two. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mom and my sister, but there is a reason I no longer live in Durango. I’m happy they’re having such fun, embarrassing as it might be. But the moment people started calling me One of those Schmitt girls, I was out of there.

  Now that I think about it, I should probably give Mom a call. Find out from her whether she is actually going on this cruise or whether it was a ploy by Karly to get me to come. But when I spot a small puddle forming under the bag that holds my one indulgence, frozen yogurt, I quickly tend to my priorities first. Yes, the frozen yogurt.

  -

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Kendra?”

  He sounds almost wary on the phone. Lars is his name, a man I met about four months ago on the dating site I’d signed up for. Well I never actually met him, but we’d been e-mailing back and forth occasionally. After a week on the dating site, I’d taken down my profile. Too many creeps out there. A lot of them plain sleazy in their approach, and I swear some of them were married, looking for an affair on the side. Not my cup of tea. The only decent guy who’d approached me tentati
vely was Lars. We’d exchanged a couple of e-mails before I’d decided to take down my name and when I warned him, he’d asked if we could continue to just talk over regular e-mail. He’s a high school teacher in Gallup, New Mexico, and the moment he mentioned that, I’d looked him up. There hadn’t been any pictures for the teachers on the online staff directory for Miyamura High School, but the description fit him to a T. I had seen a picture on his profile on the dating site where he was hiking the Grand Canyon—one of the main reasons he’d peaked my attention. Rather studious looking, but handsome. Forty-three years old and never been married, according to his description, but looking for someone who shared his main passion: nature hikes. It seemed like a good place to start. Over the past months, he’d proven himself to be witty, regaling me with some funny teaching stories that would put a smile on my face. So when I spotted his e-mail, right after hanging up with Mom, who confirmed she’d be leaving with Karly over the weekend, I read it eagerly. To my surprise, he’s asking to meet. We’d never really talked about that possibility. Although in hindsight, it seems only natural things would progress to that at some point. Coffee in Cortez. He’s apparently on his way to a conference in Grand Junction and since it wouldn’t be out of his way to stop in Cortez, he thought I might like to meet. That’s when he asked for my number, which I freely give him. Four months of talking, surely if he was after something more nefarious than a bit of companionship, he’d have grown tired of me by now. I’d barely hit send on the e-mail with my phone number and the damn thing rings.

  “Hi, Lars?” I respond, a little out of breath. It’s a bit unnerving to suddenly be talking to someone who’s been more of an abstract figure behind the computer so far. A gentle chuckle sounds over the line.

  “That’s me,” he says. “A bit weird, isn’t it? Hearing a voice to go with the words we’ve been exchanging for the past months? I mean, you sound great. I mean, nice.” He seems a little flustered and for some reason that puts my mind at ease. “I’ve got to admit, I’m a little nervous. I’ve never actually gotten this far.”