by Mitch Goth
Kellen awoke in a daze. She could hardly remember how she had landed on the couch, or what she was done before then. For a moment, she sat still and tried to bring it all back together in her head. Maps. It was all about the maps. She sat around all night looking at them and analyzing patterns. She had no idea how close she was, or how far off even. But after a full night of work she had to have gotten somewhere. After the night passed through, she recalled Ezra waking up and ushering her to bed.
She shot up from the couch, praying he hadn't run off anywhere. Kellen saw him across the room, standing over the table. At first she was ready to breathe a sigh of relief, but then she saw a gleam of metal in his hand. A knife. Instinctually, she lunged down to the coffee table where her gun sat. She spun back up just as he took notice of her and held the gun high and aimed it at his head.
"What the hell are you're doing?" she asked. "Drop the knife, now!"
"I see your sleep has made you more level headed," Ezra replied in a dry sarcasm.
"Shut up." She stared down the sight of her weapon. "Put the knife down, now."
"If I may explain for a moment." Ezra shifted himself to reveal his other hand to her, and the yet to be sliced apple it held. "This was all that the knife was for, nothing more than that."
"Why?"
It was obvious that she had made a massive misstep at this point. But despite that, Kellen kept the gun up and ready. This had nothing to do with him anymore. This was about her. That gun stayed up and ready to end a life because of her own mind taking complete control over her body. This was the stance she used to take in the mirror, a long time ago. She would stand there with a block of wood or something gun-like and aim it just like this. Wide, balanced stance, strong arms, heavy gaze, every ounce of her ready to shoot.
Back then she didn't think about where she would go or how she would do. All she knew was that she wanted to catch killers. If she wasn't able to catch them she would take this stance and gun them down. But ever since joining the FBI, she had never taken this stance, never taken a life, never fired a bullet in the line of duty. Today wouldn't be that day either. But no matter how much she told herself to stop, all Kellen did was keep the gun up and straight.
"Why?" Ezra repeated the question with a scoff. "Because people usually eat food to live for longer than a few days. Besides, I needed to celebrate somehow, but this was all this odd safe house place had." He looked around the bland room with a slight grimace. "Can't say I expected anything greater though."
"Celebrate what?" Kellen was breaking herself out of the kill mode she had caught herself in.
Ezra grinned. "I found our pattern."
"Wait, what?" Kellen shook off the thoughts in an instant, although she only lowered her weapon a few inches.
"Come here and I'll show you."
Still not lowering her gun much further, Kellen approached the dining table where all the maps were spread out. Looking down at all of them, she saw all the markings she'd made during the night. Now they were brought together in the final pattern.
"What the hell," she muttered in amazement. "What all did you find?"
"Well, honestly, you performed much of the work, making the main lines," Ezra explained. "All I had to do was connect them in just the right fashion, and I found out everything."
"What'd you find out?" Kellen let her weapon go to her side, but she never lost consciousness of its presence in her grasp.
"Well, as your genius friends in the Texas State Patrol and your even more genius friends in Washington so smartly deduced, each body was dumped only twenty miles from the pick up spot."
"So?"
"So it was a ploy." Ezra replied. He didn't sound it out with his usual smart, cocky tone though. He said the words darkly, as if he had been at the wrong end of an evil trick and all he wanted was revenge.
"What in the hell do you mean by that?" Kellen picked that statement apart in a million different ways. A lot of the thoughts were meaningless and absurd. Anything was possible.
"This guy wanted the authorities to think he didn't go far from the pick up point during his two week spans, but it was a trick."
"From the beginning?"
He nodded. "Consider, if he would have stuck around the area of the first disappearance, a search party would have come across him, wherever he was, within the two weeks. That is unless he hid astoundingly well. For once or twice, anyone would see that occurrence, but this many times is ludicrous. No one person hides themselves nearly a dozen times. He had to be gone, long gone, and stay gone until they were dead. After that, it would be nothing more than a fleeting pass through to dump the body someplace someone would see it. Always careful to make sure of that."
"He wanted to toy with us there. He wanted us to know the exact time it would be until another body showed up, only for us to still fail at stopping it every time." Kellen felt her fists clench.
"This person played with you in so many other ways. No one saw any of the other tricks though. He had to travel far, no doubt there had to have been an average, some kind of focal point in the middle ground of all these places. Once you reach the number that this guy is at, a pattern will form. But without a massive sample size, you either need to guess or look hard. And, what can I say, we're not in any business to guess."
"You found that pattern?" she inquired, stifling her hope for a moment. "Is there an average distance?"
"One hundred and eighty to two hundred miles, give or take a handful here or there."
"Are you serious? You found it?" Kellen asked. Another massive break in her case. She felt the bust coming. Although a lot of work still needed to be done, she was ready.
"More than that, my fair captor." He smiled, his dark voice fading off. "I looked even deeper still, at where that focal point in all these places landed."
"Anything good?"
He pointed a long index finger into a circle in middle Texas. "This is that point, noticing anything?"
"Jesus, it's remote as hell." She chuckled. "There's nothing more than a village or two in here."
"Except one place." He shifted his finger up, off from the center of the circle. A tiny black dot. The map key told that to be a larger population, a real town.
"Sun City." She read off from the map. "What the fuck is Sun City?"
"A town of twelve thousand people in the middle of this nowhere land in the center of Texas. Not big enough to create any congestion or for people to be snooping where they shouldn't be."
"And not small enough to arouse any major talk over some small suspicious activities," Kellen finished the thought. "Holy shit."
"Congratulations, Agent Monello, You have the nest of your crow."
"Jesus, I need to send units there."
"No. If I'm wrong about Sun City, and he's near there, you'll spook him and he'll run, then you'll never find him."
"Right, we should head there ourselves first."
"Exactly. But first, can we celebrate with something other than old apples?"
"Like what?"
"What about donuts?"
"Donuts?" Kellen cocked her head in confusion.
"Yeah, there's a place right down the road." He took a few steps towards the door. "Besides, cops like donuts."
"Whatever." She shook off his playful jab as she followed him out the door. They needed to celebrate, even if it was just at some gross corner donut place.
As they walked down the street. She contemplated telling him about her previous mind state, about just how close she had come to shooting him down for trying to cut an apple. But she kept her lips tight. It didn't seem to bother him any, he didn't even ask about it now as they walked down the road. Besides, trouble was the last thing she wanted to stir up between them, although it seemed unlikely that Ezra Grazer would get heated or hold any grudge. Still, Kellen wanted to play it safe. There were far more important things to deal with. They had to catch a serial killer before he could kill again.
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