by Blake Pierce
***
Mackenzie walked into her parents’ bedroom. The smell of blood clung to the air and her nine-year-old self already knew the smell for what it was before she saw it all over the bed sheets and walls. She saw her father on the bed and her dream-self didn’t even flinch. She stepped to the side of the bed, barely giving her father a glance; in dreams she’d had before she always looked at him and she knew it would be the same now. Dead eyes and an almost unbelievably black hole in the top of his head. The gun he supposedly used to do it to himself was somewhere on the bed, hidden among the twisted sheets like a coiled snake, watching.
Mackenzie walked past her dead father and to the window that sat just slightly to the left of the bed. She pulled the drawn curtain aside and looked out. She could see something in the front yard, some shape shrouded by shadows. A car approached from the driveway, splashing headlights across the figure. It was a woman, tied to a post, stripped to her underwear and fighting to get away.
The car pulled into the yard and parked behind the bound woman, casting an almost Christ-like shadow across the yard. Another figure stepped out of the car and stood in front of the headlights. He looked impossibly tall and from where Mackenzie stood, he seemed to not have a face. He paid the bound woman no mind and headed directly for the window. Mackenzie stood her ground, taking in more of the man’s detail as he got closer to the window. His eyes were pitch-black and when he grinned at her, it seemed to stretch from ear to ear.
Mackenzie knew then that it was the Scarecrow Killer. More than that, it was the man that killed Susan Kellerman and Shanda Elliot. They were one and the same, the personification of the human corruption she had tried to understand since the night she walked in to discover the dead body of her father.
“Come get me,” the dark figure said to her, placing an enormous and scarred hand on the window. The entire house seemed to rattle with the simple touch. “I’m waiting…”
Mackenzie took a step back and collided with something solid. She turned around and found her father there. He was standing up, his dead eyes looking down at her. He opened his mouth to speak to her and a strangled whisper came out.
“I’ll always be dead, Mac,” he said, reaching out to her. “No matter how hard you fight, I’ll always be dead.”
His hand fell on her shoulder and even through her shirt, she could feel that his dead flesh was impossibly cold.
“Daddy…” she said.
Mackenzie jerked awake at 4:32 and knew right away that she would not be going back to sleep. The tank top she wore to bed was soaked in sweat and her heart was hammering away in her chest. She got out of bed quickly, as if the bed itself had conjured the ghastly nightmare.
She took a shower and brewed a pot of coffee. She drank two cups while looking over the notes on the Kellerman and Elliot cases. She also made notes of her own concerning the suspect they’d apprehended at Dupont Circle Station and the fiber she’d spotted at the landfill.
Just before six, her phone dinged as she received a text message. She checked it and saw that the message was from Ellington:
You’ll be getting an e-mail in the next few minutes that is going to sound scarier than it is. Remain calm. If you need to talk to someone when it’s all said and done, reach out to me.
The message was cryptic beyond belief but she restrained herself from responding back with questions. She couldn’t deny that the message made her terribly nervous, though. She looked at the third cup of coffee she had poured for herself and decided to pour it down the sink. She busied herself by getting dressed and fixing her hair, doing everything she could to not stress out about the way yesterday had ended and the alarming text from Ellington.
When she opened her mail on her phone twenty minutes after receiving Ellington’s text, she found that she had a new mail waiting. It was from Deputy Director Justin McGrath, a man she had never met but had heard plenty about. Ultimately, he oversaw the bulk of active agents and their assignments. From what she understood, there were only one or two positions above him within the hierarchy of the Bureau.
Now more nervous than ever, she opened the e-mail. She found right away that the e-mail had been written by McGrath directly and not an assistant or secretary as most e-mails were from someone higher up. The message was plain, simple, and terrifying.
Ms. White,
It is crucial that you meet me in my office at 7:00 a.m. sharp. I have also made this same request of Agent Bryers.
She read the e-mail only once. That was all it took. There was no sign-off of any kind. Not a thank you or a see you then. Her nerves were like electric wires and a pit of worry formed in her stomach. If she had not already showered, she would have gone for a run just to relieve some tension. But she then recalled Ellington’s text, telling her that there may be no real need to be scared.
Easier said than done, she thought as she headed out the door, wondering if this might be the last day she had to entertain the dream of becoming an agent.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Deputy Director McGrath’s office was pristinely clean. The oak desk he sat behind gleamed in the morning sun that came in through the blinds. When Mackenzie walked into his office within the J. Edgar Hoover Building at 6:58, she saw that Bryers was already there. He was sitting in one of two chairs at one end of McGrath’s desk. He looked like a man who knew he would soon be led to the gallows.
As for McGrath, he sat behind his desk with the authority of a bear in a cave. He was about the same age as Bryers but looked way more hardened. He wore a pair of eyeglasses that made him look almost villainous—which went well with the sour look he wore on his face.
“Shut the door behind you,” McGrath ordered as she walked in.
Mackenzie did so and then walked to the other chair beside Bryers, where she sat down slowly. Before she had gotten fully seated, McGrath was on his feet and leering at both of them over the desk.
“I need one of you to explain how this whole scenario is going to work,” he barked at them. “I was informed about our little experiment with Ms. White and thought it was stupid to begin with. But ultimately, the decision was made somewhere over my head and now I’m stuck dealing with your fuck-ups.”
He focused solely on Mackenzie and when he did, his gaze fell on her like dead weight. “Make no mistake, Ms. White…I am not in favor of making people that have not even made it through the Academy feel special. I don’t care if I hurt your feelings. I think having you on this case while just barely halfway through the Academy makes a laughingstock of the Bureau. On the other hand, I’ve read your dossier and heard your praises sung from more mouths than I care to admit. But this isn’t shit-kicking country anymore, Ms. White. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“I’m not sure you do,” he said. “If you did, then the suspect you two apprehended at the bus station last night would not have scrapes on his face and a bruise on his back the size of a grapefruit. If it weren’t for the underhanded negotiations of Agent Bryers, the suspect could have easily lodged a complaint—a complaint that would have stuck, sending your ass packing back to Nebraska and making the people that made the decision to give you a shot look very stupid.”
McGrath then turned his attention to Bryers, the vitriol and anger still present. “And you should have known better than to let her handle such a thing. What the hell were you thinking letting her run after the suspect?”
“I tried to tell her not to. But…she’s damned fast, sir.”
“I don’t care how fast she is. You wanted a partner ASAP and this is the one you got. You agreed to this. So she’s your responsibility. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you hear that?” McGrath asked, looking back to Mackenzie. “You’re his responsibility. You do nothing without his permission.”
“Yes, sir.”
McGrath took a deep breath and then removed his glasses. He massaged the area between his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, pushin
g a headache back before it was too far gone.
“I had a conversation with the other deputy directors, the section chiefs, and the director of the Bureau last night,” McGrath said. “We took a vote and it was really close. For the sake of time and preventing any further murders, you are still on this case, Ms. White. However, if an arrest has not been made in forty-eight hours, you’re off. And in that time, should you make any more stupid mistakes like you did last night, not only are you off the case, but you’re also no longer a part of the Academy.”
Mackenzie felt as if she had been slapped in the face. “Sir, that’s—”
“If you end that statement with not fair, I’ll see to it that you’re done and headed back home today,” he said.
Mackenzie snapped her mouth shut and did everything she could to hold his eye contact. As she did, he put his glasses back on and picked up a folder from his desk. He handed it to Bryers, seemingly happy to be rid of it.
“Hopefully, this will help,” McGrath said. “These are the results from the sweep of the landfill fence last night. I received them less than an hour ago. There’s a pretty solid lead here.”
Bryers opened the folder, scanned it, and nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
McGrath shrugged and opened his hands to them, palms outward. “Don’t thank me. My hands are tied for the next forty-eight hours. Yours, however, are not. So I suggest both of you get out there and follow up on this right now.”
Bryers got to his feet instantly. Mackenzie followed suit. They made their exit without McGrath saying another word.
When they started down the hall, which was starting to fill with the regular flow of morning workers, Bryers walked as close to her as he could. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Look…he’s right. I shouldn’t have let you rush after the guy.”
“Forget it. What did we find out about him, anyway?”
“Nothing. He says he wasn’t trying to offer the girl money for sex. But the guy has a record of petty theft and consensual sex with minors. We think he might be part of a small prostitution ring. He might have been trying to recruit the girl last night.”
“Any link to Susan Kellerman?”
“Nothing obvious,” he said. “But we’ve got a team working on it.”
“And what about that folder?” she asked, nodding to the folder McGrath had just given him.
“Let’s go find out,” he said.
She nearly apologized for jumping the gun at the station last night, but bit it back. McGrath had just given her two days to help Bryers wrap this case up. Her career with the Bureau—her very future—was on the line now.
She wasn’t about to waste time with apologies.
***
Mackenzie was looking at the file McGrath had given them while Bryers drove. The lead was for a man named Ronald Staunton, fifty-six. He currently worked as a gutter installer for a small construction company, with previous employment for a variety of other construction crews. He had been fired from at least three of his last jobs showing up to work drunk. The only dings he had on his criminal record were possession of marijuana from nearly fifteen years ago and a domestic abuse charge that had been thrown out in court.
As she looked through the folder, Bryers spoke up for the first time since they had hit the road. “One thing to remember about being an agent,” he said, “is that it is always better to be safe than sorry. No one is ever going to scold you for being too thorough. And that’s why I don’t completely fault you for what you did last night. Sure, you were a little rough, but that happens from time to time. If FBI agents got their wrists slapped for every cut or bruise they inflicted on suspects during a chase or altercation, there wouldn’t be a Bureau.”
“I just…acted,” Mackenzie said.
“I know what that’s like,” he said with a smile. “I can remember what it was like being an agent for that first year or so. I can only imagine what you’re going through…not even out of the Academy yet. Anyway, I thought you should hear that. It looks like you lost some sleep over it. You look tired, Mackenzie.”
“I am,” she said.
“I don’t sleep well sometimes either,” he offered. “In this line of work, you see things you sometimes maybe shouldn’t see. It starts to chip away at the way you sleep…hell, the way you live.”
Mackenzie almost asked him what he meant. What had he seen or done during his time as an agent that had so deeply affected him? But she kept quiet; it was clear that he was done talking about it, as evidenced by his hard-set eyes and the way he made an effort to look forward, as if she was not in the car at all.
Ten minutes later, just as the dashboard clock ticked to 8:02, Bryers pulled the car to the side of the road along a modest residential street. Most people had not yet left for work, so the streets and driveways were filled with cars. As they parked, Mackenzie watched as a wife got into a clunker of a car four houses down. She was giving her two kids kisses goodbye as her husband watched from the front door.
“Anything in the file jump out at you?” Bryers asked. For now, he had apparently decided to slink back into the role of instructor.
“Nothing that aligns with a sudden interest in killing women,” she answered. “The domestic abuse raises a flag but isn’t a surefire accusation for murder. Based on what you told me, I think the guy from the station last night is a better fit.”
“That’s right. It’s a shot in the dark, but—”
“But better safe than sorry,” she said, echoing his earlier sentiment.
“That’s exactly right.”
They stepped out of the car together and made their way up Ronald Staunton’s cracked concrete sidewalk. Bryers took the lead, ringing the doorbell and making sure to stand slightly in front of Mackenzie.
A dog started barking inside immediately. Mackenzie guessed it to be a mid-sized dog, possibly older. There was not much bite to its bark. Roughly ten seconds later, the front door was opened by a man who had crested middle age. He was wearing a white T-shirt and carpenter jeans. He was holding a cup of coffee as the barking dog—a crossbreed of a lab and beagle, it seemed—yammered on behind him. The man looked curiously at Mackenzie and Bryers while keeping the cowardly dog at bay with his right leg.
“It’s early,” the man said. “Can I help you?”
“Yes sir,” Bryers said. “Are you Ronald Staunton?”
“I am. Again, can I help you?”
Bryers pulled his badge and ID out quickly, almost like a parlor trick. “I’m Agent Bryers, and this is Agent White,” he said. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Staunton looked genuinely confused and the look that bloomed on his face when he saw the ID told Mackenzie all she needed to know: this was not their guy. Still, it wasn’t her place to say anything just yet, so she let Bryers go through with it. She wasn’t about to get in his way again.
“What about?” Staunton asked.
“Well, we’d like to know if you can provide your whereabouts over the course of the last few nights,” Bryers said.
“Am I under arrest or something?” Staunton asked.
“No,” Bryers said. “We just need to ask you some questions.”
Staunton looked gravely at them for a moment. Mackenzie saw something very similar to disappointment in the man’s eyes. Something about the way he looked at them was nearly heartbreaking.
“Look,” Staunton said. “I made some mistakes in my past. I was a slob, I was lazy, and I was selfish. But I’ve turned myself around. Been sober for seven months and mended a lot of the bridges I thought I had burned. That old me…he was an asshole. That’s not me anymore.”
“That’s fantastic,” Bryers said genuinely. “All the same, we have a set of your fingerprints on a chain-link fence from a landfill where two bodies have recently been dumped. More than that, we also have a white fiber that we believe is from a shirt. We are currently having DNA tests run on the fabric and believe it will also point d
irectly to you.”
“Bodies?” Staunton said, aghast. “Murder? Are you for real? I hit my wife in a drunken act of stupidity six years ago and that’s enough to flag me for a murder suspect?”
“When your prints are found at the scene of where a body was discovered, yes, it does.”
“Ah, hell,” Staunton said, slapping his hand against the doorframe in frustration. “You know what? Fine. Yes. I climbed over a fence at the landfill three nights ago. But all I was doing was getting rid of paint cans for the guy I’m working with. We can’t dump them anywhere because environment freaks are all worried about paint hurting the earth or whatever. So yeah…I did that. I’ve done it a few times.”
“You have proof?” Bryers asked.
“No. Not unless my employer wants to fess up to illegal dumping.”
“Can we please come in?” Bryers asked. “This shouldn’t take too long.”
“And what if I say no?” Staunton asked.
“Sir,” Mackenzie said, sincerely feeling bad for him, “there’s no need to make this harder than it is. If you say no, we’ll go get a warrant and be back in a few hours and go through this again. If we have to, we’ll come to your work and show you the warrant. Or you could just invite is in now.”
“Fine,” Staunton said, stepping aside, kicking the dog back lightly as he did so. “Come in and ask your questions. It’s a damn shame that the idea that someone can truly change isn’t worth a cup of piss anymore, isn’t it?”
Mackenzie and Bryers headed inside, silent because there was nothing either of them could say to that.
There was nothing more to do here, anyway, Mackenzie realized. A guilty man, no matter how good of an actor, would have at least a trace of fear in that first initial moment. Staunton looked genuinely shocked, though.
She sighed, knowing this wasn’t their man.
