Deep Dark Mire (An FBI Romance Thriller ~ book four)

by Kelley, Morgan

  “I won’t ever contact any of you again!” Desdemona screamed after her in indignation. “I don’t need any of you, and especially the brothers you picked up on that fucking cesspool reservation. Keep them!”

  Looking down at the badge and the gun, she shook her head at the woman’s words still audible through the door. Confrontation was expected, but that was just a volatile brew. It broke her heart at the words Doctor Adare threw around, especially the hate directed at Ethan and Callen. Elizabeth tucked the gun in the back of her jeans and pulled her shirt over it. There were days she hated being boss, and today was definitely one of them. Despite what Desdemona believed, she cared.

  Maybe too damn much for her own good.

  But that was no one’s cross to bear but her own.

  Both men glanced up as Elizabeth walked through the door of their shared room. They’d been waiting for her to come back, and her face said it all. It had gotten really ugly.

  “Was it that bad, angel?” questioned Whitefox, feeling horrible that she had to do the entire thing alone.

  Elizabeth nodded, but said nothing more. She tossed the badge in her hand to her husband. “She quit, and I tossed her out of the bed and breakfast.”

  “I’m perfectly fine with that,” added Blackhawk. Immediately, he pulled out his phone and sent his administrative assistant an email, requesting her to process the termination paperwork immediately. If Doctor Adare was going to take this all out on his wife, his sympathy well was going to dry up fast.

  Callen went to her side and lifted her chin to look into his eyes. “I’m sorry for whatever Desdemona said to put that look in your eyes. I know she probably went for the jugular on this one. I know when we would argue, she could fight dirty.”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “Desdemona knew what buttons to push, and she wasn’t afraid to hit them all. It was best I took this one, Cal. I didn’t want you to be her target right now. Anything Desdemona said to me wouldn’t hurt as much, as what she could say to you.”

  “Want us to go kick her ass for you?” inquired her husband, also coming to her side. There was no doubt in his mind that if she was that hurt, it had to be them that she verbally attacked. His wife was feeling the pain like a slice to the heart.

  “No, you don’t need to kick her ass, but let’s just say the bridge is burnt down, and isn't ever going to be built back again. You can’t cross the line and then expect the words to not come back to haunt you. Everything she threw out is now in the universe to haunt her, and I can’t forgive the things she said. I won’t forgive them.”

  Ethan glanced over at his brother. Yeah, the words were definitely directed towards them. Since only one thing really pissed her off personally, it had to be about their heritage.

  In this case, it was one of those definitive rules that sometimes not knowing was a better idea for everyone involved.

  ~ Chapter Nineteen~

  The three stood outside the church, observing the people who were beginning to congregate for Saturday morning prayer meetings. It was lost on Elizabeth why people felt the need to head to a church to pray. If they really wanted to talk to the higher powers, they only needed to close their eyes and do it where ever they stood.

  Maybe it had something to do with feeling safe and in a place that offered them peace. She was thinking most of the people congregating there wouldn’t be feeling so comfortable and safe, if they knew the truth. The man who was leading their parishioners had been having a torrid affair while married, with the child of the bayou witch.

  Yeah, they wouldn’t be happy to hear that their connection to God was just as laden with sin as they were. Then her thoughts went to the murdered woman. Had she felt remorse for having the affair? Possibly planning to come forward and tell the truth, and then had to be taken care of before that happened.

  Who knew what lived in the mind of a killer. It eluded Elizabeth how killing someone was a far better option in one’s mind than just being called a cheater and adulterer. Was one sin a better option over the other in his mind? Or was a sin a sin, regardless of the nature?

  “You're thinking,” stated her husband, as they leaned against the Escalade just watching and waiting for Jefferson Delray to arrive.

  “I’m trying to figure out why he thought murdering the mother of his two children was less of a sin than just admitting he was having an affair.”

  Whitefox dropped a kiss on the top of her head. Since she left Desdemona’s room, she’d been lost in quiet contemplation. Something she said had stirred Elizabeth up. “Maybe he did it in a fit of passion and heat of the moment.”

  She shrugged. “If either of you plan on having an affair, please be aware that I’ll be doing the killing.”

  Ethan laughed and dropped his arm around his wife’s shoulder. “I’m well aware of how vindictive and dangerous you are. I’m not stupid enough to believe I could get away with it.”

  “I wouldn’t do it either,” added Whitefox, “and not because I’m afraid of what you’d do to me, angel, but because I wouldn’t want to hurt you like that.” Now he knew what Desdemona had planted in Elizabeth’s mind and heart. She was worried that the men she loved were going to turn on her and break her heart. Desdemona indeed had gone for maximum damage, by trying to plant that nasty seed of fear. It was hard to find anything redeemable in the woman, who he was going to marry at one time. All Callen felt now was anger that she had used Elizabeth as a verbal punching bag.

  “Okay,” she said, not sure what to reply. All this was tripping her up. Elizabeth had to believe that the men in her life would love her forever, and everything Doctor Adare said was just to screw with her. Getting distracted like this was a sure fire way to get yourself killed.

  “Do you think I’d cheat on you, Lyzee?” asked Whitefox, needing to know the truth. Callen turned her face towards his, so he could see her eyes.

  Before Elizabeth could answer, a blood curdling scream caused them to jump. All three agents ran for the church and up the stairs to the sound, guns drawn and ready for the invisible enemy waiting.

  What they found was the horrible ends to a sad situation.

  Jefferson Delray was sitting in his desk chair and he’d taken his own life. A twelve gauge shot gun lay propped between his knees, and his brains were spread out on the wall behind him. The man had taken his life by eating his own weapon.

  Blackhawk pushed the hysterical woman from the room, trying to regain control of the scene. People had come running and now there were sobs and hysterical banter over the loss of the leader of their flock, and the grotesque splatter of brain matter behind him on the wall.

  Whitefox kicked the door closed behind his brother, not wanting to touch anything around them to preserve the scene. He also didn’t care to hear weeping over a man who caused this mess. “I’ll call the tech team in for a body retrieval and evidence sweep.”

  “Please if you don’t mind, Cal. It looks like Minister Delray knew we were coming for him, and the truth was about to come out,” stated Elizabeth. She carefully walked around the back of his chair and peered at the exit wound at the back of his skull. “Well holy shit, Cal. He picked the right damn gun for a dramatic exit. Nothing like literally blowing your damn brains out as you go to meet your maker.”

  “Jesus, there’s brains on the ceiling too. Watch they don’t fall on you, Lyzee. I’m not picking them out of your hair later.”

  Elizabeth glanced up and stepped out of the potential brain free fall. “I’m not taking another one for the team and delivering this news to Desdemona.”

  “I’m out too. I may strangle her for whatever it is she said to you earlier. Ethan is probably feeling that way too, so let’s have Doctor Leonard pull this one.”

  Elizabeth stared into the almost hollowed out shell that once was his head. “I’m with you. I don’t have the stomach for it. Which is absolutely ironic since I’d rather look at this mess than do the notify to someone that was once my friend.”

  Whitefox pulled her back a
s a big chunk of brain fell from the ceiling, or at least it looked like brain. With this ungodly mess- who knew? “Watch it, angel.”

  “Thank you, Cal,” she said, carefully trying to not step in the evidence that was splattered everywhere. Next Elizabeth stared at the blood and brain spatter across the wall and the projection looked fairly accurate to her. There was no doubt in her mind that this wasn’t a set up.

  The man took his own life. Elizabeth was pretty sure that he viewed suicide as a sin, and yet that didn’t bother him either. Really, the whole religion thing pissed her off.

  Just at that moment, a thick chunk of brain slid down the wall, and drew her attention. “Oh, terrific! I think I can see the bullet hole from the slug up by the ceiling. It was hiding behind some brain. Now the tech team doesn’t have to dig through the ick to find it.”

  “That’s probably going to disappoint them,” added Whitefox. “You know how they love their work.”

  Elizabeth nodded, as she walked towards the desk and the dead man. His eyes were open, and she was completely freaked out by the empty stare. Dead eyes were her big ick, and she couldn’t help it. Ever since her partner died in front of her, they haunted her.

  “You okay?” Callen asked, watching her stare at the man’s face.

  “Yeah, he hasn’t been dead long. The eyes haven’t gotten that hazy look yet. Once that happens, all bets are off for me.”

  “Good to know,” he said.

  “Do you have a tissue, Cal?” she asked, watching him walk the perimeter of the room, looking for anything that looked out of place. Callen was memorizing the scene for the report.

  “Yeah, here’s a box of them,” Callen answered, pulling one and looking at his phone as it beeped. “Tech team has left the ME office and is in route. They should be here relatively soon.”

  Elizabeth accepted the tissue, nodding at his words, but focused on something on the desk. “Looks like the late great Jefferson Delray left a note for us. I love when they leave a farewell to make our jobs easier,” she retorted, sarcastically. “Oh look, it’s sticking out of his bible. Maybe he should have read the book a little more and spent less time cheating, lying and committing suicide by twelve gauge.

  Tell my daughter that I’m sorry. I was the one that stole her mother away from them.

  “He knew we were getting close,” said Elizabeth, laying the note back down. “Jefferson Delray believed this was his only way out. Before he took himself out, he confessed and repented all at once.”

  The door crashed open, and both agents went for their guns, as Jonathan Delray charged through the door. What he found was the worst thing he’d ever seen in his entire life.

  “Dad!” he bellowed, rushing towards his father, only to be taken down by Whitefox. They both landed in a heap on the floor not far from the pieces of brain. “Get off me!” he screamed in horror. “I need to get to my dad!”

  Elizabeth closed the door again and went back to the men struggling on the floor. “Jonathan, you can’t touch him, you know this is a crime scene now. We have to preserve it.”

  The man struggled and the tears rolled down his cheeks. “My dad!” he sobbed.

  Whitefox kept him pinned to the floor. “Let us do our job, Jonathan, and then you can have him back when we’re done.”

  “Who killed my father?”

  Elizabeth crouched beside the men. “It looks like he took his own life, but we need to have the tech team find the truth and an ME decide on that.”

  “NO! You’re very wrong! Suicide is against God’s will! Someone had to do this to him, because my father wouldn’t ever do that! He was a man of God!”

  Elizabeth’s eyes met Whitefox’s and she sighed. “Jonathan, we were coming here to question your father. We believe he took his life because he knew we’d found out the truth about what happened twenty five years ago.”

  The man looked confused. “I don’t understand,” he sniffled.

  “Your father began having an extramarital affair almost three decades ago, and it resulted in the birth of two children.”

  “He had an affair?” That to him seemed even more incredulous. “No way! My father loved my mother, and when she died of cancer, he was crushed. There’s no way he ever had an affair, and you can’t tell me otherwise.”

  Whitefox still held the man down, he knew what was coming, and he wanted to make sure that Elizabeth was safe if the man erupted. She may have been Desdemona’s target this morning, but he wasn’t letting her be Jonathan Delray’s too.

  “Remember the day you punched my partner here, and we took the epithelial cells from under his nails?”

  “Yes.”

  “We found they matched. Your father had an affair with Trinity Adare.”

  The man first looked confused, then he got it, and that confusion went from shock to horror and then to sheer revulsion. “I was in love with my own sister, and we created a child?”

  Elizabeth simply nodded because words wouldn’t ever be able to soothe that heart wrenching truth.

  “Oh God, oh God,” he muttered. “I’m going to be sick,” he stated quickly.

  Elizabeth grabbed the waste paper can and shoved it under his face, as he purged everything in his body. It wasn’t lost on her that Jonathan Adare was more upset that he had sex with his sister than that his father was a murdering, lying, adulterous bastard.

  Didn’t that just say it all?

  Neither agent spoke as the man was violently ill over the truth coming to light. Incest was always an ugly thing, especially for those who believed that they were living their lives like normal people. What were the chances that the man would fall in love with his own sister? At any point, Jefferson Delray could have told his kids the truth, doing the right thing, but he wasn’t honorable. This was the ugly outcome of sins the father created years ago. Now the kids were left to clean up the huge mess that the man had made.

  When he finished she handed him a tissue. “You going to be okay, Jonathan?” she asked, crouching back down.

  “Are you kidding me? Seriously? My father’s dead and you just told me I was fucking my own sister, and we created a child. Do you think that I’m ever going to be okay again? That any of us are going to survive this?”

  “Ease up, Jonathan. We didn’t create this mess.” Whitefox let him up, but protectively stood beside Elizabeth, just in case he tried to go after her.

  “I need to go tell my sisters all of this. I need to go be with my family, because they can’t hear this from you. Stay the hell away from my family!”

  Elizabeth nodded and watched him leave. “Well, he took that just about the same as Desdemona took it.”

  “This is a big mess.”

  She couldn’t agree more. “At least it wasn’t me dropping the F bomb in the house of God this time,” she said, trying to lighten the grimness, as they stood in a room half covered with an old man’s brains.

  “The heathen in me likes when you curse in a church,” he answered, walking over and staring down at the man. “Lyzee, he leaves a note, confessing his sins for the last time, but he doesn’t confess to killing Cordelia. I take it that we were right. He didn’t kill Cordelia. If you're going to off yourself, you confess it all. Not just half. Jefferson Delray didn’t take Cordelia’s life.”

  “I believe this is pretty much confirmation for me. I’ll bet my badge on it at this point.”

  Ethan Blackhawk escorted Doctor Chris Leonard into the room with a few techs, before closing the door behind him. “I need every piece of evidence in this room and fast, and the man transported back to the lab. I need to know if he self-terminated or had a helping hand into the afterlife.”

  “Yes Director.”

  Elizabeth stepped forward. “Doctor Adare knows the truth, and she turned in her badge. She’s not allowed in the lab. If she shows up, send her away. All she gets is COD and nothing more.”

  “Okay, boss,” he said. “I haven’t seen her yet today. Is she going to be alright?”

 
Elizabeth shrugged and changed the subject. Pulling on gloves, she took the sealed up note and handed it to her husband. “Chris, look at this man’s hands. Tell me what you see,” she said walking over with him.

  Chris Leonard waited while the tech swabbed for gunshot residue, and then took the man’s hand in his. “Holy shit. This man is riddled with arthritis. This had to be incredibly painful. He’s lucky he was able to pull that trigger and take his life.”

  Elizabeth focused on her partners. “Is it your professional opinion that the man couldn’t drag Cordelia Adare through the swamp and hide her body?”

  “Lyzee, this man had to be in continual pain. There’s no way he could walk to his car without agony, let along trudge through the swamp like we did, or scale that rock cliff to get to the bodies.”

  “Thank you Doc, that’s all I needed to hear from you.”

  Elizabeth, Ethan and Callen left the room to give the techs the time they needed. Outside the building, they stood there in silence.

  Blackhawk finally spoke, reiterating what she’d pretty much already knew. “So we have two killers.”

  Elizabeth just shrugged. “I can’t see it as just the old man.”

  Whitefox crossed his arms. “What if Jonathan Delray found out that he was having a relationship with his sister, and then killed her? We never found the fetus, and assumed that the snakes ate it, but what if he removed it to hide the evidence. The killer would have known the truth the entire time. He would have known that the Delray’s and the Adare’s were related.”

  “It’s possible,” said Blackhawk. “Maybe we should go pick him up and bring him to the sheriff’s station for questioning.”