Eleven (Brandon Fisher FBI Series)

by Arnold, Carolyn

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 Carolyn Arnold

  Excerpt from Ties that Bind Copyright © 2011

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted by U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database, or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Cover designed by George Arnold

  Edited by Wendy Reis

  Visit the author website at www.carolynarnold.net

  ELEVEN

  Eleven Rooms. Ten Bodies. One Empty Grave.

  Brandon Fisher never expected this when he signed up as a Special Agent for the FBI. Working in the shadow of Supervisory Special Agent Jack Harper of the Behavioral Analysis Unit his career seemed set. But when the team is called to a small rural town where the remains of ten victims are found in an underground bunker, buried in an unusual way, Brandon knows he'll never return to his normal life.

  With one empty grave, and the case touching close to home, he fears he's become the target of a psychotic serial killer who wants to make him number eleven. Only thing is, everything Brandon thinks he knows is far from the truth.

  “Arnold's imagination and attention to detail do not leave any loose ends. Exciting.”

  — Rosa St. Claire, MIAMI BOOKS EXAMINER

  “...Silence of the Lambs, move over. ELEVEN is an absolutely stunning performance.”

  — Frederick Lee Brooke, author of Doing Max Vinyl and other books

  “Masterful, gripping writing! Would make a thrilling movie!...”

  — Betty Dravis, Amazon top reviewer and author of 1106 Grand Boulevard and other books

  ALSO BY CAROLYN ARNOLD

  Ties That Bind (A Madison Knight Novel)

  Justified (A Madison Knight Novel)

  Sacrifice (A Madison Knight Novel)

  Eleven, Brandon Fisher FBI Series

  Hart’s Choice (A Novella)

  Pearls of Deception (A Short Story)

  Rings of a Tree (A Short Story)

  THIS BOOK INCLUDES

  A SNEAK PEEK OF:

  Ties that Bind (A Madison Knight Novel)

  AT THE END OF THE BOOK

  Dedicated to George Arnold

  my husband, best friend, and greatest supporter

  CHAPTER 1

  Nothing in the twenty weeks at Quantico prepared me for this.

  A Crime Scene Investigator, who had identified himself as Earl Royster when we first arrived, came out of a room and addressed FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jack Harper. “All of the victims were buried—” He held up a finger, his eyes squeezed shut, and he sneezed. “Sorry ’bout that. My allergies don’t like it down here. They were all buried the same way.”

  This was my first case with the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit, and it took us to Salt Lick, Kentucky. The discovery was made this morning, and we were briefed and flown out from Quantico to the Louisville field office where we picked up a couple of SUVs. We drove from there and got here about four in the afternoon.

  We were in a bunker illuminated by portable lights brought in by the local investigative team. A series of four tunnels spread out as a root system beneath a house the size of a mobile trailer and extended under an abandoned cornfield.

  A doorway in the cellar of the house led down eleven feet to a main hub from which the tunnels fed off. The walls were packed dirt and an electrical cord ran along the ceiling with pigtail fixtures attached every few feet.

  We were standing in the hub which was fifteen and a quarter feet wide and arched out to a depth of seven and half feet. The tunnels were only about three feet wide, and the height clearance was about the same as here, six and a half feet. The bulbs dangled down from the fixtures another eight inches.

  I pulled out on the collar of my shirt wishing for a smaller frame than my six foot two. As it was, the three of us could have reached out and touched each other if we were inclined.

  “It’s believed each victim had the same cuts inflicted,” Royster said. “Although most of the remains are skeletal so it’s not as easy to know for sure, but based on burial method this guy obviously had a ritual. The most recent victim is only a few years old and was preserved by the soil. The oldest remains are estimated to date back twenty-five to thirty years. Bingham moved in twenty-six years ago.”

  Lance Bingham was the property owner, age sixty-two, and was currently serving three to five years in a correctional facility for killing two cows and assaulting a neighbor. If he moved in twenty-six years ago, that would put Bingham at thirty-six. The statistical age for a serial killer to start out is early to mid-thirties.

  The CSI continued to relay more information about how the tunnels branched out in various directions and the ends came to a bulbous tip.

  “There’s eleven rooms and only ten bodies.” Jack rushed the briefing along as he pulled a cigarette out of a shirt pocket. He didn’t light up, but his lips suctioned around it as if it was a life supply.

  Royster’s eyes went from the cigarette to Jack’s face. “Yes. There’s one tunnel that leads to a dead end and there’s one empty grave.”

  “What do you make of it?” Jack spoke with the cigarette bobbing in his mouth and turned to me.

  “Of the empty grave?”

  Jack’s smile slanted higher on the right, his eyes pinched, and he removed the cigarette from his mouth. “That and the latest victim.”

  Bingham had been in prison for the last three years. The elaborate tunnel system he had going would have taken years to plan and dig, and it would have taken strength, leaning towards Bingham not working alone. “He had help. Someone followed behind him.”

  Jack perched the unlit smoke back in his lips. “Hmm.”

  “Anyway, you’ll want to see it for yourself. I haven’t seen anything like it,” Royster continued.

  Jack’s eyes narrowed, and his brows compressed.

  “Come—” The back of a wrist came to his nose in an instant. The spray of sneeze only somewhat diverted. More sniffles. “Sorry ’bout that. Anyway, this way.”

  Jack motioned for me to go ahead of him.

  My thoughts were on the width of the tunnel. I took a deep breath, careful to stagger it so that he wouldn’t notice.

  Tight space.

  I pulled out on my collar again. Sweat dripped down my back.

  “Go ahead, Kid.”

  Both Jack and the CSI were watching me.

  The CSI said, “We’ll look at the most recent victim first. Now as you know the victims alternated male and female. The tenth victim was female so we believe the next is going to be—”

  “Let me guess, male,” Jack interrupted him.

  “Yeah.” Royster took off down the third tunnel that fed from the bottom right of the hub.

  I followed behind him, tracing the walls with my hands. My heart palpitated. I ducked to miss the bulbs just as I knew I’d have to and worked at focusing on the positive. Above ground the humidity sucked air from the lungs; down here the air was cool.

  Another heart palpitation.

  I counted my paces—five, six. The further we went the heavier my chest became, making the next breath even more expectant and less taken for granted.

  But, this was my first case. I had to be strong. The rumor was you either survived Jack and the two years of probationary service and became a certified Special Agent, or your new job would be security detail at a mall.

  Five more paces, and
we entered an offshoot from the main tunnel. According to Royster, three burial chambers came off this tunnel. He described these as branches on a tree. Each branch came off the main trunk for the length of about ten feet and ended in a circular space of about eleven feet in diameter. The idea of more space seemed welcoming until we reached it.

  A circular grave took up most of the space and was a couple of feet deep. Chicken wire rimmed the grave to help retain its shape. With her wrists and feet tied to metal stakes, her arms and legs formed the human equivalence of a star. As her body had dried from decomposition, the constraints had kept her positioned in the manner the killer had intended.

  “And what made them dig?” Jack asked the CSI.

  Jack was searching for specifics. We knew Bingham had entrusted his financials to his sister, but when she passed away a year ago, the back taxes built up to the point the county had come to reclaim the property.

  Royster answered, “X marked the spot.” Neither Jack nor I displayed any amusement. The CSI continued, “He etched into the dirt, probably with a stick.”

  “Why assume a stick?” Jack asked the question, and it resulted in an awkward silence.

  My eyes settled on the body of the female who was estimated to be in her early twenties. It’s not that I had an aversion to a dead body, but looking at her made my stomach toss. She still had flesh on her bones. As the CSI had said, preserved by the soil.

  Her torso had eleven incisions. They were marked like the linear way to keep count. Two sets of four vertical cuts with one horizontal slashed on an angle through each of them. The eleventh cut was the largest and was above the belly button.

  “You realize the number eleven is believed to be a sign of purity?”

  My chest compressed further knowing another person was going to share the limited space. Zachery Miles was a member of our team, but unlike Jack’s his reputation hadn’t preceded him. I had read his file and he had a flawless service record and the IQ of a genius. He was eight years older than I was.

  Jack stuck the cigarette he had been sucking on back into his shirt pocket. “Purity, huh?”

  I looked down at the body of the woman in the shallow grave beside me. Nothing looked too pure about any of this.

  “I’m going to go.” Royster excused himself.

  “Without getting into the numerology and spiritualistic element,” Zachery continued, not acknowledging the CSI.

  Jack stretched his neck side to side and looked at me. “I hate it when he gets into that shit.” He pointed a bony index finger at me. “Don’t let me catch you talking about it either.”

  I just nodded. I guess I had been told, not that he needed to treat me like a child. I possessed no interest in things I had no reason to know about. I believed in God and angels despite the evil in the world, but beyond that I had no desire for more insight into the spiritualistic realm.

  “The primary understanding is the number one is that of new beginnings and purity.”

  My eyes scanned Zachery. While his intelligence scoring revealed a genius, physically, he was just an average guy. If anything, he was slightly taller than Jack and I, probably coming in at about six-four. His hair was dark and trimmed short. He had a high brow line.

  “Zachery here reads something once—” Jack tapped his head. “—It’s there.”

  Jack and I spent the next few hours making our way to every room where Jack insisted on standing beside all the bodies. He took pause studying each of them carefully, even if only part of their remains had been uncovered. I’d pass him glances, but he seemed oblivious to my presence. We ended up back beside the last victim where we stayed for twenty minutes, not moving, not talking, just standing.

  And I understood what he saw. There was a different feel to this room, nothing quantifiable, but it was discernible. The killer had a lot to say. He was organized and immaculate. He was precise and disciplined. He acted with a purpose, and like most killers he had a message to relay. We were looking for a controlled, highly intelligent unsub.

  Nine victims had their intestines removed, but Doctor Jones, the coroner, wouldn’t conclude it as the cause of death before conducting more tests. The last victim’s intestines were intact. And, even though COD needed confirmation, the talk that permeated the corridors of the bunker was the men who did this were scary sons of bitches.

  Zachery entered the room. “I find it fascinating he would bury his victims in circular graves.”

  I looked up at him more from a need to break from the body than from curiosity. Fascinating? I turned to Jack when I heard the flick of a lighter.

  He held out his hands as if to say he wouldn’t light up inside the burial chamber. His craving was getting desperate, though, which meant he’d be getting cranky. He said, “Continue, Zachery, by all means. The kid wants to hear.”

  “By combining both the number eleven and the circle, it makes me think of the coinherence symbol. Even the way the victims are laid out.”

  “Elaborate,” Jack directed.

  “It’s a circle which combines a total of eleven inner points to complete it. As eleven means purity so the coinherence symbol is related to religious traditions—at minimum thirteen. But some people can discern more, and each symbol is understood in different ways. The circle itself stands for completion and can symbolize eternity.”

  I cocked my head to the side. Zachery noticed.

  “We have a skeptic here, Jack.”

  Jack faced me and spoke with the unlit cigarette perched back in his lips. “What do you make of it?”

  Was this a trap? “You want to know what I think?”

  “By all means, Slingshot.”

  And there it was, the other dreaded nickname, no doubt his way of reminding me that I didn’t score perfectly on handguns at the academy. “Makes me think of the medical symbol. Maybe our guy has a background in medicine. It could explain the incisions being deep enough to inflict pain but not deep enough to cause them to bleed out. It would explain how he managed to take out their intestines.” Was this what I signed up for?

  “Hmm.” Jack mumbled. Zachery remained silent. Seconds later, Jack said, “You’re assuming they didn’t bleed out. Continue.”

  “The murders happened over a period of time. This one—” I gestured to the woman, and for a moment realized how this job transferred the life of a person into an object. “—She’s recent. Bingham’s been in prison for about three years now.”

  Jack flicked the lighter again. “So you’re saying he had an apprentice?”

  Zachery’s lips lifted upward, and his eyes read, like Star Wars.

  I got it. I was the youngest on the team, twenty-nine this August, next month, and I was the new guy. But I didn’t make it through four years of university studying mechanics and endure twenty weeks of the academy, coming out at the top of the class, to be treated like a child. “Not like an apprentice.”

  “Like what then—”

  “Jack, the Sheriff wants to speak with you.” Paige Dawson, another member of our team came into the burial chamber. She came to Quantico from the New York field office claiming she wanted out of the big city. I met her when she was an instructor at the academy.

  I pulled out on the neck of my shirt. Four of us were in here now. Dust caused me to cough and warranted a judgmental glare from Jack.

  “How did you make out with the guy who discovered everything?”

  “He’s clean. I mean we had his background already, and he lives up to it. I really don’t think he’s involved at all.”

  Jack nodded and left the room.

  I turned to Zachery. “I think he hates me.”

  “If he hated you, you’d know it.” Zachery followed behind Jack.

  CHAPTER 2

  Salt Lick, Kentucky was right in the middle of nowhere and had a population shy of three-fifty. And just as the name implied, underground mineral deposits were the craving of livestock, and due to this it attracted farmers to the area. Honestly, I was surprised the village
was large enough to boast a Journey’s End Lodge and a Frosty Freeze.

  I stepped into the main hub to see Jack in a heated conversation with Sheriff Harris. From an earlier meeting with him I knew he covered all of Bath County, which included three municipalities and a combined population of about twelve thousand.

  “Ah, I’m doing the best I can agent. But, um, we’ve never seen the likes of this before.” A born and raised Kentucky man, the Sheriff was in his mid-fifties, had a bald head and carried about an extra sixty pounds that came to rest on his front. Both of his hands were braced on his hips, a stance of confidence, but the flicking up and down of his right index finger gave his insecurities away.

  “It has nothing to do with what you’ve seen before, Sheriff. What matters is catching the unsub.”

  “Well, the property owner is in p-pri, prison,” the Kentucky accent broke through.

  “The bodies date back two to three decades with the newest one being within the last few years.”

  Harris’s face brightened a reddish hue as he took a deep breath and exhaled loud enough to hear.

  I’m thinking Jack had the ability to make a lot of people nervous. His dark hair, which was dusted with silver at the sideburns, gave him the look of distinction, but deeply etched creases in his facial features exposed his difficult past.

  Harris shook his head. “So much violence. And it’s tourist season ’round here.” Harris paused. His eyes read, you city folks wouldn’t understand. “Cave Run Lake is manmade but set in the middle of nature. People love coming here to get away. The word gets out about this, there goes the tourists.”

  “Ten people have been murdered and you’re worried about tourists?”

  “Course not, but—”

  “It sounds like you were.”

  “Then you misunderstood agent. Besides the counties around here are peaceful, law-abidin’ citizens.”