Before He Sees (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 2)

by Blake Pierce

  “They did a few different things, actually,” Colette said. “A lot of it was calling clients from the past. They also spent some money on targeted online ads and ran Facebook campaigns. Things like that. When times got really tough last year, they even went so far as to drive the company truck through different neighborhoods, going door to door.”

  Mackenzie looked back to Bryers. An a-ha moment bloomed between them and Colette Simms barely noticed. She looked deep in thought, staring at the kitchen wall across from them. “I really should tell Benjamin,” she said.

  “Mrs. Simms,” Mackenzie said. “Do you know if they had been doing the door-to-door approach this week?”

  “I don’t know,” Collette said absently. Mackenzie noticed that Colette seemed to be slipping away from them. It was all too much for her; it made Mackenzie feel guilty for questioning her so soon.

  She walked over to Bryers and leaned in close. “We need to get an officer over here to sit with her while someone else gets her family affairs in order. She’s fading fast…and when she snaps out of whatever fugue she’s slipping into, it’s going to be nasty.”

  Bryers nodded. “Absolutely. You wrap things up with her and I’ll make some calls.”

  “Maybe see what you can do to find out some more information on Lonnie Smith, too,” Mackenzie suggested. She felt awkward giving Bryers instructions, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  Mackenzie went back to Colette Simms. She sat down on the couch beside her and, after some hesitation, reached out and took her hand.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Simms. You’ve been a great help. We’ll have someone here soon to help you with everything.”

  Colette only nodded. She still stared toward the far kitchen wall on the other side of the house. “It makes no sense,” she said. Her voice sounded like someone was talking in their sleep. “Who would do such a thing to Trevor? He never got involved with anything bad…never got into any trouble. He didn’t deserve this…”

  She went quiet then and Mackenzie watched a single tear roll down the side of her face. She heard Bryers speaking on the phone in the foyer and wondered if the information Colette had provided had struck him the same way it had struck her.

  Susan Kellerman had been going door to door with her health products.

  There was a very good chance that Trevor Simms had been going door to door trying to drum up business for his lawn care company.

  And then there was the last thing Colette had told her. He never got involved with anything bad…never got into any trouble.

  Maybe the killer wasn’t having to hunt down his victims.

  Perhaps the victims were going right to him.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  As they walked back down Colette Simms’s front porch, Mackenzie was anxious to share her theory. More than that, she was certain there would be a very easy clue to help them along—a dead giveaway that could help them locate the killer to within an area of a few blocks. She opened her mouth to share all of this when Bryers’s phone rang.

  She listened to his end of the conversation as they got into the car. All she heard was a series of yeah and uh-huh as she got behind the wheel and backed out of the driveway. Bryers gave a final yeah to the person on the other end and then hung up. He looked directly at Mackenzie and smiled.

  “You ready for this?” Bryers asked.

  “What?”

  “We got information on Lonnie Smith.”

  “Already?” Mackenzie asked, genuinely shocked at the speed of information.

  “Already,” Bryers confirmed. “Not only does he have a criminal record, but it includes a nine-month stint in prison for attempted kidnapping five years ago. Want to guess where he was busted?”

  “Near Dupont Circle Station?”

  “Bingo.”

  The connection was so astounding that it made her grin. She could feel a growing excitement blossoming between them but she tried to keep it suppressed for now. The last thing she wanted to do was get overzealous.

  “Okay, but what about the door-to-door connection?” she asked. “That can’t just be coincidence, right?”

  “You picked up on that, too, huh?” Bryers asked.

  “It’s sort of hard not to.”

  “I don’t know,” Bryers said thoughtfully. “I’ve seen stranger coincidences.” He hesitated for a moment and then frowned. It nearly killed the growing excitement between them completely.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You think Lonnie Smith is a dead-end, don’t you?” he asked. “Already?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far,” she said. “Given the circumstances, I think it’s certainly worth looking into for sure.”

  “But you’re more sold on a door-to-door connection?”

  “Yes. And you know, there’s an easy way to find out.”

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Well, Colette told us that they would take the company truck out to different neighborhoods, looking for new clients. And if Trevor was abducted and never made it back to his truck…”

  “Then there’s a very obvious clue sitting on the side of the street, probably with a Green Team decal on its doors,” Bryers finished.

  “Potentially. I think it would also be beneficial to speak with his co-worker to find out what neighborhoods they visited this week.”

  “Two leads from one visit,” Bryers said. “I like results like that.”

  “Okay then,” Mackenzie said. “Where first?”

  “Well, both and neither. I have Lonnie Smith’s address, and we can visit him in the morning. Potential suspects are going to be more cooperative after having woken up—not after being jarred awake just before midnight. He lives about forty minutes from the Academy, so we’ll leave early in the morning. Not too early, though; tomorrow is Saturday after all. In the meantime, I’ll make a call and see what I can do about getting an agent or maybe even just local PD to speak with the Green Team co-owner to see if we can find out where Trevor was trying to drum up business yesterday. When we have a location, maybe we can get a few cars to run a circuit of about five miles around the area, looking for a Green Team truck. And just in case it’s not a clearly marked truck, I’ll get Trevor Simms’s license plate number, too.”

  “Sounds good,” Mackenzie said.

  “It does,” Bryers said. “But of course, you know better than to get your hopes up until there’s an actual verified suspect in custody, right?”

  “Yes, I know.”

  He nodded satisfactorily and headed back out into the night, leaving behind a house that contained a grieving spouse for the second time in two days.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The following morning, Mackenzie met Bryers in the Academy parking lot with a hot cup of coffee waiting. This time, he had a temporary badge for her, a plastic card attached to a lanyard that she placed around her neck.

  “I pushed for them to just let you have the real thing,” he said. “They wouldn’t do it. Apparently, they take their badges pretty seriously.”

  “And what would be the point?” Mackenzie asked. “After all, I’m only going to be around for another twenty-eight hours.”

  She could see that Bryers was trying to think of something reassuring to say but was at a loss. Not giving things a chance to get awkward, Mackenzie got into their car and waited for him to do the same. It made her think of how Ellington had told her about something Bryers had encountered in his past related to work that had altered him somehow. Even now, after working with him for the better part of two says, Mackenzie still wasn’t quite sure what sort of personality he had.

  It was 7:05 when they pulled out of the parking lot. They barely got ahead of morning rush hour traffic—another thing it was taking her some time to get used to about the area around DC. Even on a Saturday morning, the ride in traffic was intimidating.

  “So we’re coordinating with Quantico and Washington DC PD,” Bryers said. “Benjamin Worley, the other Green Team guy, gave us two locations Trevor was assigned
to yesterday, all within a mile of one another. They have a few cars canvassing one neighborhood in particular where quite a bit of criminal activity is usually reported. All eyes are open for either a Green Team truck or a seemingly abandoned truck with Trevor Simms’s license plate number. That should be wrapped up by ten or eleven this morning.”

  “Great.”

  “What’s even greater is that Deputy Director McGrath knows that you made that connection,” Bryers said. “I made sure to tell him when I briefed him last night. I also let him know how delicate and efficient you were with Collette Simms. He’s still not your biggest fan, but he seemed pleased.”

  “Is he a fan of anyone?” she asked, regretting the question as soon as it was out of her mouth. She certainly didn’t want to seem as if she was bad-mouthing her superiors.

  Bryers let out a chuckle and shrugged, dismissing the comment entirely. “Himself, maybe.”

  They drove on with the flow of early morning traffic as the tangle of Quantico/DC traffic started to thicken around them.

  “Do we know where Lonnie Smith currently works?” Mackenzie asked.

  “As a plumber’s assistant,” Bryers answered. “Before that, he was working in a warehouse and before that, in pulpwood mill. He’s never held down a job for more than three years. I guess the brief prison stint probably didn’t help at all, either.”

  “Any issues since getting out?”

  “Nothing on file,” Bryers said. “But as I’m sure you know, that rarely paints a full picture.”

  They arrived at Lonnie Smith’s apartment complex twelve minutes later. It was a middle-of-the-road sort of place, not quite run down but certainly nowhere near respectable digs. Mackenzie followed Bryers up a single flight of stairs that wound through the interior of the building and then back out onto an almost motel-style walkway. They came to apartment 204, where Bryers stopped.

  He didn’t bother knocking on the door. There were two pieces of paper stuck to the door. They were both forms with letterhead that read BROOKVIEW APARTMENTS. The first form contained Lonnie’s name, his apartment number, and then the number of the landlord. The brief form explained that Lonnie’s rent was past due. The second form was identical to the first, only this one said that his rent was past due for a period of four weeks. The words FINAL NOTICE PRIOR TO EVICTION were scrawled at the bottom of the form in black marker.

  “Want to call this number?” Bryers asked, pointing to the landlord’s number.

  Mackenzie nodded, pulling out her phone and punching the number in. The phone rang twice before it was answered by an irritable-sounding woman. She had a slight Asian accent and sounded very tired.

  “Hello? This is Kim, with Brookview Apartments.”

  “Hi,” Mackenzie said. “My name is Mackenzie White. I’m working as a consultant with the FBI on a local case that has led me to the apartment of one of your tenants.”

  “No surprise there,” Kim said bitterly. “Who is it?”

  “Lonnie Smith. My partner and I are standing outside his door right now and looking at the eviction notice.”

  “Well, if you find him, get the eleven hundred dollars he owes me, would you?”

  Ignoring the woman’s anger, Mackenzie said, “How long do you know for sure he’s been gone?”

  “I know he’s been gone for at least six weeks,” Kim said. “He’s lived in that apartment for four years. His rent was always late—sometimes a day or two, sometimes two weeks. But then last month I went by to collect his late rent and he wasn’t home. He hasn’t answered calls and never comes to the door. I called the electric company and found that he had called and requested that his power be turned off six weeks ago.”

  “I understand,” Mackenzie said. “Thank you for your time.”

  “Yes, fine. I hope you find the lowlife.”

  Mackenzie ended the call and headed back down the stairs with Bryers beside her. “Do you have the name and number of the plumber he was working for?” she asked.

  “I do. I’ll forward you the e-mail right now.”

  He sent the mail as they reached the car. By the time he was behind the wheel and pulling back out into the street, Mackenzie was on the phone with the owner of Pipeworks Plumbing. Again, she found herself enjoying how rapidly and fluidly information was exchanged within the Bureau. Compared to what she had known in Nebraska, it was almost like a magic trick.

  When she had the manager of the plumbing company on the phone, she ran through introductions again, told the owner the same thing she had told Kim from Brookview Apartments, and got the same reaction.

  “Yeah, I’m not too surprised the authorities are looking for him,” the owner said.

  “Why’s that?” Mackenzie asked.

  “He just always seemed shady. But I needed the help and when he showed up, he worked his ass off. But yeah…he called me about a month ago and said he was quitting. No reason, nothing. He sounded drunk when he called. It didn’t surprise me…his work history was a joke and when I called his past employers, they told me not to expect him to stick around for long.”

  “Well, he is no longer living in his apartment,” Mackenzie said. “Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

  “He gave me an address in South Carolina to send his final check to. That’s all I have.”

  “Do you happen to have it?”

  “Not on me right now.”

  “Could you e-mail it to me? I can give you my address.”

  They went through the formalities and within about ten minutes, she had the address to where the owner had sent Lonnie’s last check. She filled Bryers in on everything the owner of Pipeworks had told her, going over the details slowly so she could consider them all over again.

  “Thoughts?” Bryers asked.

  “I think this rules him out,” Mackenzie said.

  “You don’t find his sudden disappearance very convenient?”

  “It’s noteworthy, certainly,” she said. “But there are a few things to consider. First…this guy has commitment issues. Not just with work, but with a place of residence, apparently. It doesn’t line up with the motivation and focus that it would take to kidnap someone, hold them captive for a while, kill them, and then dump them at a landfill after hours. We’re talking about two different personality types. Also, someone like this would be on the lookout for their last paycheck before they landed their next job. The fact he had his last check delivered to South Carolina makes me think he’s long gone—that he hasn’t been anywhere near here for at least a month.”

  “All great points,” Bryers said. “And I agree with all of it. Still, his disappearance in the wake of this, especially with even the slightest of links to Trevor Simms, makes him a priority. We need to call this in, give them all the available info, and let them churn their wheels. They’ll try to find out where he’s living, maybe even talk to some people involved in his attempted kidnapping from years ago. The good news for you and I is that we’ll never touch any of that unless there’s a proven link between Smith and these killings.”

  “I don’t think there is,” Mackenzie said.

  “Same here.”

  “So now what do we do?” Mackenzie asked.

  “We’re at a standstill for now. Another dead lead. We get to anchor ourselves to the case files back at the office. What’s your availability like today?”

  “Well, it’s Saturday. And I plan on making the most of the limited time I have. So I’ll probably sit in my apartment and go over the files.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “It seems like a waste of time to just be sitting on my ass and trying to come up with something from the files,” Mackenzie said. “Shouldn’t we be out at the scenes, seeing if we overlooked anything?”

  “Do you feel like you overlooked something?” Bryers asked.

  “No.”

  “Exactly. There are other departments out there anyway, looking for stray traces like hair fibers and fingerprints. So far there’s been nothin
g. You and I are the lead on this…we have to be readily available. And sometimes that means sitting behind a desk and staring at photos and sheets of paper. Comes with the job, I’m afraid.”

  “How about the expiration clock I’m working against?”

  “That usually doesn’t come with the job,” Bryers admitted. “And I’m going to try my hardest to make sure we beat that clock. I’ll admit it: you’ve been thrown into a shitty situation. For them to potentially kick you out of the Academy for something you really didn’t even have a hand in…that’s messed up.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  It was great to hear the support, but it did little good. She looked out her window as Saturday morning traffic trickled by and wondered if this might be her last weekend as a trainee.

  And perhaps more importantly, she wondered where the killer was and what his plans for the weekend might be.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  He kept thinking about the truck—that damned truck that he had somehow not even taken the time to think about when the lawn care man had come knocking. He’d let less than thirty seconds pass before he’d attacked the man. He’d then dragged his unconscious body back to his addition of the house to the soundtrack of his mother’s blaring shows and her miserable coughing.

  Once the lawn care man was safely stored away in the crawlspace, that’s when the idea of a truck had occurred to him. The lawn care man had come here somehow. Probably in a company car because that was better for advertisement. He looked at the binder that had dropped from the man’s hands in the brief skirmish and read the company name along the spine: The Green Team.

  He went back into the crawlspace and found the man stirring. He punched him twice, hard in the head, knocking him out again. He then pulled him partially out of the crawlspace and patted him down for keys. He found them in the man’s right front pants pocket. He then replaced the lawn care man, made sure the small door to his crawlspace was secured, and then walked back through his addition. When he was inside his mother’s house, he told her he’d be gone for a while and then spent the next forty-five minutes walking around the neighborhood looking for a truck or van with the same The Green Team logo he had seen on the lawn care man’s binder.