Terrorbyte

by Cat Connor

Lee sloshed out to the car, water turning the legs of his jeans a dark blue halfway to his knees.

  “You want I should carry you?” Mac asked, an evil glint sparked in his eye.

  I sniggered. “Nah.”

  “Oh, you think I can’t!”

  Uh-oh. “Not at all, I know you can.”

  He grinned, scooped me up, and whispered, “You think we’ll be home anytime soon?”

  “I hope so.”

  Lee coughed from the driver’s seat, “Excuse me. Crime scene … fresh puzzle pieces … a-a-n-y of this sound familiar?”

  I wrapped my arms around Mac’s neck and slowly slid to the ground. Mac kissed me quickly and we scrambled into the car. That was why we shouldn’t be on the same team: inappropriate behavior in a work situation.

  “Let’s get this show on the road,” he said, shutting the car door.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Breathe

  The sound of jet engines overhead drowned out the sirens on the ground and all other noise. I looked up as a huge plane flew over, its undercarriage lights flashing like the trees at my mother-in-law’s house in mid-August. Funny I should think of that analogy. Maybe not. Maybe it’s because we’re overdue for an annoying interruption. He couldn’t seriously want to inflict that woman on an innocent baby. She wasn’t grandmother material.

  We waited until the plane passed before speaking. My first comment was to Mac. “Make sure your phone’s off; I have a feeling mom is gonna try calling.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, me too. It’s at home.”

  Lee chuckled. “Good thinking, Kemo Sabe.”

  And that one innocent phrase ran that damn joke back through my head all over again. There were no stars that night, just more rain.

  We walked from the first available parking space, down the road and around shrubbery in the middle of the square at the end of the street. Police cars were visible, along with an ambulance. The house we wanted was one of the ones that backed onto a wooded area leading through to a main road. The perfect escape route for our Unsub. Probably how he got in without anyone noticing him.

  I took a minute at the front door to clear my head, readying myself for whatever we were going to find.

  Mac’s hand brushed mine, our fingers briefly touching in a comforting way. Lee’s hulking presence was right behind me and, next to him, a space where Sam should be. I blew out a long breath, pulled on latex gloves and disposable shoe coverings, and walked through the door Mac held open.

  We were standing in the living room. The first thing I saw was a child’s toy box sitting on top of a large play mat. My heart sank then hit rock bottom as I saw family photographs hanging on the walls: mom, dad and two kids. I guessed the kids were about six and twelve. The pictures were full of laughter and love. Nice.

  Mac whispered in my ear, “Don’t.”

  I nodded. I knew he, like me, was comparing these images with our childhood. We walked through the living room, into the dining room. From the dining room, I could easily see into the kitchen: black writing scrawled on the cabinets, blood, bourbon, our victim wearing gold ribbon. Everything as we expected it to be. An alarm bell clanged in my head. Exactly what I expected: why did that bother me so much? He had a pattern: it’s as it should be.

  My eyes closed. Was I being watched? I opened my eyes and looked around. Two paramedics stood talking to two uniformed officers.

  They were engrossed in their own low-toned conversation, not watching me. I could feel eyes boring into the back of my head. I spun around, startling Mac. He looked at me very oddly. I smiled, letting him know everything was okay.

  Lee was behind us, taking notes. I went back to my task, forcing myself to concentrate on the scene in front of me and ignore the unnerving feelings. Entering the kitchen, I read the poem lines aloud,

  “‘Memories stolen by the night,

  Time sliding dividing light.

  Jumbled thoughts trapped inside,

  Who I was suddenly died.’ ”

  Mac scowled. “I have always loved that. Not so much now it’s been sullied.”

  “I doubt I’ll ever write another poem.”

  “I’m less than keen myself.”

  I turned carefully around on the spot.

  “Okay, that’s part of my poem, now where’s my note?” I scanned the room, avoiding her body as much as possible. A small blue square stuck on the microwave door caught my eye. “Aha.”

  Cautiously, I picked my way across the room, sidestepping the pool of bloody bourbon and shoe prints. I tried not to inhale chlorine and the smell of bourbon-soaked blood as I went. Leaving the note where it was, I read it to Mac and Lee, “ ‘Stand By Your Man.’ Funny, that’s the song I had playing in my head at the last scene.”

  Then it hit me, a feeling I didn’t like, a mix of fear and something unknown. It took a few seconds for the unknown to clarify into abhorrence. I could feel his eyes on me. He’d been watching. He was still watching. It wasn’t the victims watching me at all.

  And he was listening.

  “Ellie!”

  I didn’t want to do this anymore. My lungs felt like they were going to burst. The air wouldn’t go in. No matter how deeply I breathed, it wouldn’t fill my lungs. I needed to get out. Why couldn’t I breathe, dammit? I pushed something out of my way that offered little resistance – maybe it was Lee. I knew I was moving but the rooms blurred to nothing, then as quickly as it happened, everything stopped. I was standing in the dark. Rolling lights from the police cruisers lit a small patch of the street in front of me. The cool feeling on my face was fresh air and pelting rain. A low buzz of conversation floated in my direction from the street. Even in the dreadful hurricane weather neighbors had gathered to rubberneck. It was the middle of the night, for God’s sake, they should have been in their warm beds. Why do people do that?

  A hand touched my shoulder. Mac. My knight. My sanity. My security. His hand stayed on my shoulder, his voice was soft. “We’re going home. Enough is enough, Ellie.”

  I uttered two words, “Crime scene.”

  “Lee’s got it. He’ll bring all the photographs and everything else back to our place.”

  I felt frown lines crease my forehead. “Our place?”

  “There’s no way we’re going across the Potomac tonight and into the office.”

  A stupid voice in my head scrambled his words. My vision distorted the lights of the police cars more than the rain had. Scrambled words and distorted vision, damn! He was watching us. I could feel him. He could even be listening. We hadn’t swept any of the crime scenes for bugs or cameras.

  I grabbed Mac by the front of his jacket. “Have Lee get this place swept for bugs and cameras. He’s watching us and he’s listening.”

  “He?” Mac asked, as he unfurled my fingers from the fabric of his jacket.

  I tried to do calm but it came out panicked. “The Unsub, he’s watching.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Save A Little Prayer

  Mac rolled over, dragging the covers with him. I latched hold of the edge of the comforter as it slid past me and tugged it back.

  He mumbled and rolled over, tangling himself in the sheet. As he fought his way free, his groggy voice surfaced, “What’s the time?”

  “Four.”

  He struggled some more with the sheet then gave up. “Why’re you awake?” His struggle resumed.

  Oh, gee, what could have kept me awake? The latest movie playing on the streets, Serial Killer does Virginia? An impending MRI to see if my brain was about to implode? Sam in the hospital? Being watched at crime scenes by the Unsub or possibly by the dead victims wanting justice? SassySelena? Dakota? On the other hand, could it be Mac wanting to talk about children?

  Mac wrapped his arms around me and pulled me under the covers with him. “Why, Ellie?”

  “No idea.”

  “You can’t lie, you know that.”

  It was warm and cozy wrapped in his arms and not the time to voice all that goes thro
ugh my head in the middle of the night. “Just the day, is all. It’s nothing.”

  I snuggled against him and vowed to enjoy the small amount of peace found during a night of inner turmoil. My eyes burned in their sockets from sheer exhaustion and this time they closed and stayed that way.

  The next thing I recalled was Mac whispering, “Wake up.”

  My eyes pinged open. “I’m not asleep,” I replied without moving.

  “You look asleep.”

  I rolled over, “Coffee?” I couldn’t smell any coffee. “What are you thinking? Waking me up without coffee? Has the world spun off its axis?”

  “Kitchen,” Mac said.

  I groaned, threw back the covers and sat up. There was no light peeking through the curtains. “Is it even morning?”

  “Barely.” Mac passed me a sweatshirt and track pants.

  “I am not going for a run. First no coffee, then no morning light, and now sweats.” I raised an eyebrow.

  “Lee.”

  Mac was a man of few words that morning. I donned the clothing. No sense Lee choking on his Cheerios and spilling his coffee because I was naked.

  “What day is it?”

  “Still Thursday.”

  “And we’re up – why?” I asked, as Mac held the bedroom door open.

  “Coffee first.”

  Even his expression gave little away. I saw tiredness and another element, not something I was accustomed to seeing in his face. If I had to pick a word to describe the extra element, I’d call it revulsion. I knew this had something to do with the case. We were not up before the birds for the good of our health. As we walked down the stairs, I could almost hear the words in his head. At the last step, I grabbed his hand, our eyes met and words tumbled from me, “There was a baby.”

  He nodded.

  “Marie’s baby?”

  Mac nodded again. I could smell the coffee now. We walked down the hall in silence and entered the warm kitchen. Lee sat on a stool at the counter, a mug of coffee in his hand and two more next to him.

  I thanked him for the coffee. Lee gave me one of those damn sorry looks men get when they know something’s broken but can’t fix it.

  “Did Mac tell you?”

  “I guessed.”

  Lee’s mouth turned up on one side, “There you go again with your own special spooky shit. How did you guess something like that?”

  “Dunno. Mac thinks loud and I can hear him? Where was the baby?”

  Lee swallowed a mouthful of coffee then answered, “In the garbage.”

  Oh, come on! A little more information was required, please; the whole house was a dump. All that came out of my mouth was, “Where?”

  “In the kitchen, among the piles of trash was a black garbage bag, half full. That’s where they found the baby.” He took another swallow.

  “When was the discovery?”

  “Four this morning.”

  “How’d we miss it?”

  “Bomb squad removed the pile after our photographer took pictures. A techie noticed a more potent smell than just general garbage as he began sifting through the trash for evidence. He uncovered the partially decomposed and gnawed remains of a baby.”

  “Oh, my God. Gnawed?”

  Lee nodded. “Rats they think.”

  The fact that Lee used the plural of rat didn’t escape me.

  Mac drank his coffee in silence.

  “How long ago did the baby die?” I remembered seeing a baby’s bottle on the bench. My mind focused on the image, the contents were separated into yellowish liquid and white lumps. That didn’t happen overnight.

  “The baby has been dead a while, two weeks maybe. It’s going to be hard to confirm, what with the heat and high humidity we’ve experienced the last few weeks.”

  By the sound of it, the vermin attention was going to confound things even more.

  “They’re doing a post mortem, right?”

  Lee nodded, “The medical examiner has already started.”

  “Good. I’d like to know how the child died.” I sipped my coffee, the bitterness complementing the mood of the conversation. “Boy or girl?”

  Mac spoke, “A girl, around three to four months old.”

  “Damn.”

  That sure wouldn’t have helped the smell in the house; the overwhelming stench would’ve disguised the decomposition, making it just another layer in an already rotting house.

  I looked at Lee and Mac. “So we got a dead momma and a much deader infant. That baby has a daddy out there somewhere. Unless I am very much mistaken, there has been no second coming and no immaculate conception here in Virginia.”

  Lee smiled.

  “Lee, see what you can rustle up by way of hospital records for momma Marie. We might get lucky. She had to give birth somewhere. I really hope she didn’t do that in that filthy house and that there were doctors or midwives involved.”

  “I’ll get it moving.”

  He started to get up. I stopped him. “Finish your coffee. Neither mom or baby are going anywhere now.”

  Mac placed his mug on the counter and, with deliberation, poured himself another. He must’ve known I was watching but he never looked up when he spoke, “Lee, can you give us a minute, please.”

  “Sure,” Lee replied. “I’ll head on into your office and get making some calls.”

  I waited until I heard the office door close before speaking, “What’s up?”

  “You know,” he took my hands in his and I just knew it was bad, “I was serious about us talking about kids.”

  “I figured that.”

  His voice softened, the pressure from his hands increased on mine, “How bad would it be?”

  “Are you asking if what happened to Marie’s baby could happen to ours? Or if what happened to us in our childhoods could happen again?”

  “I guess both.” His eyes smiled. “We’re not our parents, we’re especially not our mothers. You are not your mother.”

  “We don’t know that, Mac. We don’t know if having a child will precipitate the same madness, the same condition.”

  “Do you really believe you were the trigger that drove her over the edge?”

  I didn’t want to believe that. I’d never wanted to believe that. I had no proof. All I had was a nagging feeling that it could be true. Here he was standing in front of me, asking me to consider bringing children into our marriage. A year ago, he was asking me to marry him. I could see deeper into his soul than ever before. I saw Mac the father. I saw his love, caring, protection and joy. Then I knew exactly what my answer would be.

  “No. It wasn’t my fault.”

  A smile crept into his eyes. “Think about it, Ellie.”

  I wanted to scream, ‘Yes, I’ll have your baby,’ but at the same time, I wanted to run and hide and wished this would go away. Maybe I could call his bluff. I squeezed his hands. “What if I said I had been thinking about it … that I had decided we should try?” The words hung in the air like a flashing neon sign. To me they warned of danger. To Mac they flashed something very different.

  He pulled me into his arms so fast I had whiplash. His breath ruffled my hair as he spoke. “You serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “Too late to ask that now, but I believe the answer is … absolutely. We’re both nuts to even have this conversation.”

  “We’re going to do this?”

  “Yep.” I looked up into his hazel eyes and wondered if our baby would have his eyes or my blue ones. The thought felt alien and uncomfortable as it continued to include hair coloring and skin tone. It held me so completely, there was no escape. Even our dubious genealogy was no match for the total package we could create. There was no guarantee that it’d happen anyway. Plenty of couples can’t have children and we might be one of those couples. If there is a God, we would be one of those couples. “Finish this case first.”

  There was a knock on the open kitchen door. Lee poked his head around, “Sa
fe to come in?”

  “Yeah,” we answered.

  “I’m going to head on into the hospital first thing. I’ll check on Sam then go digging through files. Am I going to need a warrant?”

  I thought for a minute. Damn, he might. Marie was dead so that wasn’t an issue but if daddy’s name appeared, there could be a disclosure problem. “Nah. Yeah. Dammit. We need to cover our asses.”

  I tried hard to keep the cringe from my voice. “We’re working with Judge Rubenstein.”

  “I take it that’s a ‘yes’?”

  I nodded. “Get a warrant. I want to make sure we’re covered further down the line.”

  Sam smiled. “So I gotta wake up Old Ruby?”

  “Yeah, tag – you’re it!”

  Rubenstein was an absolute horse’s ass. To get a warrant signed by him entailed jumping through a few hoops. Last time I asked, I ended up making him a pot of tea and toast, then walking his evil little yappy rat thing on a leash. He called it a dog. I failed to see the resemblance.

  “I’m heading for the shower, seems like this night is over as far as sleep goes.”

  Mac kissed the top of my head as I moved to the door. I could hear him and Lee chatting about what the day would bring as I climbed the stairs.

  Minutes later, I was standing under hot running water washing the night off my skin with soothing sandalwood soap. It smelt like Fiji. I could almost hear the waves on the shore and feel the golden sand under my feet. Suddenly Fiji evaporated.

  The cold rain of the night before pelted against my skin and memories of crime scenes flooded my head. I turned off the shower. If the action replay was going to turn into a full-blown hurricane of a deal, with added blood and bourbon, I’d rather not be lost within it and find myself turning into a wrinkled prune under the hot shower.

  By the time I was dressed in fresh jeans and a crisp, clean white tee shirt I felt better. I plonked myself on our bed and attacked my hair with the blow dryer. My, time flies: ten minutes later, it was no longer wet and I’d brushed it back off my face.

  I flicked through the pictures in my phone while I waited for real daylight to edge its way through the crack in the curtains. Two pictures in particular caught my attention: Markov the dead Russian and Selena the crash victim. I studied her face. Admittedly, a camera-phone photograph of a passport photo doesn’t make for a clear image.