Fireflies: A Katie Bell Mystery (book 1)

by BG Archer

  Her parents had taught her many valuable things over the years, but the most important thing was something Arthur had drilled into her over and over again. (The first time she remembered hearing the speech was when she was six, but he probably said it earlier than that.)

  "Remember, Katie, it's the people that plan carefully who get it done. Yes, some people, well really everyone, has winged it from time to time with various results, but it's the ones that plan ahead that succeed. The secret is, that's the hard part. Doing the work ahead of time and being ready. Showing up is half the battle. The planning's forty-five percent, and then it's just the five percent of doing it that really counts."

  He had playfully poked her nose at this point, and then headed off to work, or so she liked to think of it back then, he was off to catch bad guys.

  Except one of those bad guys had caught up to them.

  Katie shuddered and shoved those thoughts down where she didn't have to think about them.

  Less than a minute later she was lying on her bed and engrossing herself in the first of two books she could not apparently obtain anywhere else. It was written by the professor teaching the course and was on basic psychology. Ten pages in Katie understood why it had no major publisher. It was utterly dull, and while in some ways it complemented the Psychology 101 book that was course required (and she had already read,) it was written in an academic manner that was so stuffy Katie thought she was going to sneeze. Another ten pages in and she began to feel her eyes droop, but she continued, determined to make a solid dent in the book before she moved on.

  "Well, good afternoon, sleepyhead," Tiffany said.

  Katie's eyes snapped open.

  The book was literally lying on her face and Tiffany was standing nearby, wearing an knee-high orange summer dress this time and a pair of silver four-inch heels, and a wide brown belt wrapped around her thin waist.

  "Sorry to wake you…"

  "No, no it's fine, this book is dreadfully boring. Put me to sleep in fact."

  "What does that say about the class you're going to take?"

  "I'm afraid to find out."

  "So you went shopping at the bookstore this morning?"

  Katie yawned and sat up, stretching her arms above her head and hearing a familiar and very satisfying pop of her back.

  "Yeah. Where did you go so early?"

  "Oh well, I'm still on Texas time. I guess I wanted to see and explore the town a bit."

  "You walked downtown in those things?" Katie asked pointing at the heels.

  "Goodness no, there was an early bus running downtown and I took that. A super creepy guy hit on me actually. It was a bit disturbing. I think he was homeless. Still though, aside from that, Asheville is so quaint and adorable. It reminds me of Gilmore Girls. Like what I've seen of the town anyway, but I do wonder how the night scene is."

  Katie felt her face light up. “Wait a second, you like Gilmore Girls?”

  “Oh, I just love them.”

  Katie hugged Tiffany. “I think I’m like totally going to love you,” Katie said, and both girls started to giggle.

  “Listen, even if the night scene here does sucks the city’s only two hours away. And I have a car," Katie added smiling at her friend.

  Tiffany smiled and looked Katie over again, obviously inspecting her outfit.

  "I adore those pants. Be careful or I may steal them."

  "I don't think we are the same size."

  "Of course we are the same size. Well…" Tiffany glanced around Katie at her butt.

  Katie pushed her playfully. "Skank! Actually it's true. I do have a bit of a butt."

  It was actually Katie's favorite feature, other than her mother’s eyes. She still managed to fit into skinny jeans and actually because of her larger back area looked great in them, but it was from long hours working out that enhanced the feature.

  "That's a very kind offer about the city, but the real question is what do you want to do right now? That is if you don't have any plans…"

  "I'm totally free."

  Katie's stomach gurgled. She touched it and then looked back at her friend. She was craving meat and fat.

  "You hungry?"

  They got food at Till You Drop directly across the street from Pizza. It was a bar, but they allowed minors until 9PM according to a Goth girl with a nose ring, two studs in her right eyebrow, and earlobes that looked more metal than flesh. Tiffany was nervous to approach her, but Katie had a good vibe so she had asked as they passed their darkly dressed peer. The Goth girl was nice (and downright shy) and mentioned that the bar had the best fries and burgers around, and completely tolerable salads.

  Katie ordered a cheeseburger and fries, while Tiffany went with a grilled chicken salad and a diet Coke.

  The Goth girl was right, the food was good and they both enjoyed themselves.

  Tiffany talked about her time in Texas, her time with friends and showed them off with various pictures on her iPhone. Katie shared as well, her pictures showing her prom with Luke (Tiffany oohed at how attractive he was, and Katie smiled despite herself) and her sister-from-another-mother-Sarah-Ann.

  Tiffany shied away from talking about boys. Katie got a pretty straight orientation from Tiffany, which was why Katie noted it, though it didn’t matter to her one way or another. Everything else about Tiffany was not the least bit gun-shy. She seemed brutally honest in fact, a trait that Katie admired.

  It wasn’t like Katie didn’t have her own things she’d rather not talk about. Like why she was going to SCU as opposed to her other many options. She had a feeling it would come out at some point (if nothing else because even two hours away from the city, people did talk, and of course there was just a simple Google search), but Katie was in no rush to ... rush things.

  Still, she was curious as to why the Southern belle wasn't willing to shed a bit more of what seemed like an open, but bit of a gossipy nature.

  9

  10:40PM Friday, Sept 21st

  Of the five men, the federal investigators quickly set their full attention on William Seaborn. As far as they were concerned, he was the only suspect. It wasn’t that they were opposed to it being somebody else, but it was Seaborn that checked off a series of standard questions that made him the most likely candidate.

  In college, Seaborn had been arrested twice on drug possession and distribution changes while attending North State School. His father had conveniently made the charges go away, though the official reason for dropping the charges was not enough evidence to prosecute. Upon graduation (he majored in business), Seaborn had moved back to the city to be a salesman for his father’s drill parts company. That was in 2001 and his father had died of a heart attack in 2006; since then Seaborn had run the company with a kind of Freudian vengeance, being aggressive and expanding his market share by almost thirty percent in the past six years.

  He was thirty-four, with above average intelligence and looks. He had voted Republican in the last three elections, owned three firearms, and had a concealed carry license for his handgun. Most importantly though, two of his ex-girlfriends had restraining orders against him for, in their words, “having a scary temper and in general being kind of a first-class asshole, and the only thing he loved in the entire world was his cat.”

  A report from his former secretary stated he was incredibly OCD and had fired her in part because she would not play the proper role.

  His version of the proper role included fetching him coffee by crawling to him, as well as considering it perfectly reasonable that any sort of misbehavior deserved a spanking.

  She could have sued him, but his compensation package of fifteen thousand dollars plus a direct quote, "I didn't want him mad at me,” was enough for Arthur Bell and his team.

  The fact that the other men had alibis for after Tori Watson went missing, whereas William Seaborn had seemingly vanished into the wind, was what pushed the team over the edge, and the usual measures were taken. Search warrants of Seaborn’s apartment and bus
inesses were issued, and they went through their usual law enforcement motions.

  They raided his office Friday afternoon and his apartment Friday evening. Seaborn’s place was just as meticulous as his office. Some things were missing from his apartment, including his firearms. His computer was still in there, and after an easy to crack password was breached (thanks to Agent Fields) the cheap Dell laptop revealed a digital diary with several passages detailing his fantasies about “getting even” with his exes. There were also a dozen photos of Tori Watson on the computer, all time stamped for the three weeks prior to her death and taken at a distance with what had to be a telephoto lens. There was also a receipt for a Spyderco pocketknife, purchased in cash in the bottom drawer of his desk, purchased five weeks ago.

  There was also evidence of a hastily-packed bag and no passport. The team already knew that Thursday afternoon he had withdrawn fifty thousand dollars in cash from his savings account.

  Within an hour of the raid, an APB was put out to local authorities as well as sent to the airport and train stations, but other than that there was nothing for them to do but to sit back and wait.

  Shifts ended, current reports were either filed or saved, and everyone involved went home.

  Except Arthur Bell.

  He stayed for another few hours reading over all the evidence again. Arthur stared at crime scene photos of Tori’s body for so long that even if the senior agent closed his eyes, he could see them with near eidetic perception. He also went through all of Seaborn's emails on his home computer dating back one year. The information was all copied; the originals were stored on the hard drive of the laptop, which the technicians would go over later.

  What mattered to Arthur was painting a clear picture of what William Seaborn was doing in that moment. Details about how to find him via William’s digital footprint was important, but that’s why Arthur had a team. Understanding Seaborn’s motivation, the base of his desires could be just as important in catching him, and that was what mattered to Arthur, and why he had a better chance of catching Seaborn before he could hurt anymore innocent lives.

  The only problem was, none of the files Arthur was going through was helping cast light on that picture. Arthur felt like he was trying to look through a lens at the picture when it was covered in spray paint.

  Yes, there were the surveillance photos, and yes there were the diary entries, but that was really it. The little details that made it feel real, there was enough to make it clear Seaborn did it, but it felt too much like … broad strokes. Like what somebody would expect the FBI to jump on. Blood was in the water, but who had actually made the cut? The journal he kept on his laptop felt … sloppy. Not like everything else Arthur had seen about the young man. The William Seaborn that he had seen and heard about was many things, but sloppy was not one of them.

  Still, that didn’t really matter. What mattered was finding Seaborn, since he really was their only suspect.

  So Arthur and his team were hunting him. If he was who it appeared to be, finding him quickly was of the utmost importance. Tori’s murder, the kill site, that was done by a fanatic.

  It was well into Saturday morning when wariness finally got the better of him and Arthur succumbed to sleep, his head dropping onto his desk.

  Arthur woke to the sound of the cleaning crew in the predawn hours … His nap not even close to sufficient, he headed home, blinking the sleep from his eyes the entire drive back and trying to stay in his lane.

  Once home, Arthur collapsed into his bed without taking off his suit jacket, though he did manage to loosen his tie before passing out.

  He woke before noon to the horrible taste in his mouth of not having brushed his teeth. Arthur grimaced and headed straight into the bathroom, stripping as he went. Teeth brushed, he turned on the shower and let it start to steam as he inspected himself in the mirror. He looked tired, but the five hours he had gotten would have to be enough.

  Arthur showered and, dressed only in a towel, went downstairs to make breakfast. He had a steaming bowl of oatmeal and half a grapefruit and put on a fresh pot of coffee, which was ready around the same time the oatmeal was. He drank one cup with his breakfast and refilled it before heading into his office and turning on his computer to go over the current case files.

  They had located the other men at the nightclub, and had questioned them all extensively. Of the four men other than Seaborn that had interacted with Tori, two of them had hard alibis for later in the evening, and the other two did not have hard alibi’s, but it was clear they had not done it. Everything about them in their interrogations had indicated that were scared shitless about being questioned by the FBI, and in no way fit the profile of a serial killer disciple.

  The two bartenders also checked out, so just to be on the safer side of things Arthur did some digging into the waitress, Lacy Person, since aside from the men she had the most interactions with Tori Watson at the club. Arthur had found absolutely nothing of interest about her. She had attended SCU and graduated three years prior with a degree in communications, and was now putting it to good use with her bar job. She had worked as a teller at Third Union Bank for two years at several locations (one before she graduated from Katie’s school and one after), but had switched to the service industry full time thirty months ago. The strangest thing Arthur had found as his eyes scanned over his iMac's screen was she had no Facebook account. At her age, and considering her occupation, that just seemed a tad unusual. Perhaps she had an over-controlling boyfriend, but from the pictures she had been tagged in on her bar's Facebook page it did not appear so.

  Arthur made a mental note of it and he continued to think about it as he dressed. He put on a cloud grey suit from Ted Baker. Underneath it he wore a white shirt and a blue tie, and added a brown belt and shoes to match. Arthur selected one of his favorite watches, although not a particular expensive one to wear, a Citizen with a large white face that had a nice weight to it on his wrist with a brown leather band.

  He inspected himself in the mirror and found everything to be to his liking.

  For a moment the case was not on his mind and his only thought was of appearances and how much he enjoyed dressing the part, or rather, over-dressing the part.

  Before his mind could turn back to the case however, his BlackBerry went off.

  Margaret.

  Margaret Ruben was the closest thing Arthur Bell had to a real boss. Technically her title (Special Agent in charge) made that abundantly clear, but in reality, since the job had first been offered to Arthur and he had declined and suggested Ruben, it had created just the kind of relaxed atmosphere he wanted.

  Ruben and Bell had been partners for six and half years before he had been given the job offer and when she was promoted instead, he fit into his new role as chief special agent perfectly. Margaret was Arthur's solution to dealing with the ever-intruding levels of bureaucratic bullshit at the FBI.

  She was the Scully to his Mulder, always had been, and just being his partner had relieved a great deal of stress from his daily life. She was the perfect person for dealing with the slow monotony and slightly psychotic madness of the workplace politics that inevitably took over a great deal of the time of whoever was actually running the office. Her patience seemed better suited for the politics over him and, in the five and half years since she had taken over, they had continued to work well together in a much more unofficial manner. Margaret had flown out Thursday afternoon because she was supposed to be at a conference for regional managers in DC. It was the kind of four-day event that senior FBI agents always complained about being forced to attend, but secretly loved for the high quality free meals and for the occasional discreet trysts and also massive consumption of taxpayer-paid booze.

  Arthur answered the phone on the third ring.

  "How's the conference?"

  "It's … going."

  "You're hung over aren't you.”

  Margaret laughed. "When the deputy director is at your table and you’re all d
rinking, you keep up. I just wanted to do a quick check in and see if there’re any updates on William Seaborn. Tapscott forwarded me the arrest warrant last night."

  "I was just headed into the office myself, but so far I've received no calls. I'm going to assume that everything is the standard status quo when it comes to this sort of thing until we have further information. Everyone's looking, etc."

  "Okay. Well, due to the weather, it looks like I might not be back until late Tuesday.”

  "I'll make sure the fort's still standing when you get back."

  “The only reason I'm worried is you're the one manning it."

  "I should let you get back to learning about whatever new bureaucratic restrictions are being placed on us.”

  Margaret scoffed. “Please, don’t talk like one of those counter-terrorist cowboys. Everytime there’s one of these things I feel like they’re getting worse. You’d think after we got Osama last year they’d relax, but no. Maybe they are worried we’re going to mess with their precious budget, but it’s not like they don’t get pretty much a blank check for whatever. Sorry, I’ve had a few Old Fashioneds. You know how I get after I’ve had a few.”

  Arthur smiled and rubbed his forehead with his thumb and index finger. “Yeah. I remember.”

  "Oh yeah, we’ve got a lovely meeting in an hour about the latest cyber security updates. It’s going to be fun when we have an entire office meeting about that on Wednesday when we get back.”

  “I may have to be out in the field that day."

  "It's going to be mandatory, Bell."

  He groaned. "Of course it is."