Before he Kills (A Mackenzie White Mystery—Book 1)

by Blake Pierce

  “While the locations don’t line up perfectly,” Mackenzie said, “they are extremely close in proximity. What this means is that if this isn’t simply a coincidence—and at this point, I think it’s clear that it is not—then we can pinpoint the rough location of where the next crime scene might be.”

  “How do we know which order he’ll go in?” one of the officers at the table asked. “If there are three remaining, is there any guarantee he’s going on geographical order?”

  “No, there’s no guarantee,” Mackenzie admitted. “But so far, that’s been the case.”

  “And are we still unsure about how he’s selecting the victims?” Porter asked.

  “That’s being checked as we speak,” Mackenzie said. “We have men checking in with the three strip clubs in that hundred-mile radius. But I think we also need to assume that he wouldn’t look beyond prostitutes as well.”

  “What about these bitter waters?” someone else asked. “What kind of water is that?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Mackenzie said. “But we’ve already informed the coroner to check the stomach contents of the victims to see if there is anything out of the ordinary: poisons, chemicals, anything like that. I personally believe that it could just be holy water and if that’s the case, it will be impossible to pinpoint it.”

  “You mean blessed water doesn’t glow magically?” another officer asked. There were a few chuckles around the table.

  “Hey,” Nelson said, taking the front of the room again. He went to the board and grabbed a red marker. He circled the phantom area on the projected map that seemed to align the best with the fourth city on the map Mackenzie had drawn.

  “I’m putting White in charge of locking down this area right here,” he said. “I want at least eight available men out there within the next hour to take a survey of the place. Get a lay of the land, learn the roads, and stay on patrol within the area until you hear otherwise from me. Nancy, I need you to get on the phone with the State PD and request the use of a helicopter to sweep the area.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nancy said.

  “Another thing,” Mackenzie said. “Unmarked cars only. The last thing we want is to tip this guy off.”

  Nelson considered this and she could tell something about it irritated him. “Well, with only four unmarked cars, that limits us. So I’m allowing patrol cars, but not to be parked or stationary. Now, with everything we now know, there’s no excuse to not catch this guy before a fourth woman has to die. Any questions?”

  No one said anything as everyone within the room got to their feet. There was a tingle of excitement in the air that Mackenzie could almost feel like a physical presence. Officers started to file out eagerly, sensing that the end of this wretched case was upon them. She knew the mentality; at this point, anyone could potentially have the chance to arrest the suspect. Although someone else (in this case, her) had made the connections and presented them with an endgame solution, it was anybody’s ballgame now.

  As Mackenzie headed for the door, Nelson stopped her. “That’s some damn fine work, Mackenzie. And I’ll tell you something else, too: Ellington was singing your praises when he got back to Quantico. I got a call from his director and they were complimenting you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Now if I could just keep you from chasing down overweight online journalists and scaring the hell out of them, I think you’d have a promising career ahead of you. That Pope creep has had two different lawyers calling after you. I don’t think he’s going to leave this alone.”

  “Sorry, Chief,” she said, meaning it.

  “Well, push that to the back burner,” Nelson said. “For now, let’s concentrate on catching this killer. Journalists are almost as bad but at least Ellis Pope isn’t stringing women up by poles and beating them to death.”

  She cringed internally at how lightheartedly Nelson was referring to the victims. It reminded her that, even in the midst of a sudden and unexpected stream of confidence and praise from the man, he was the same creature of habit he had been when she had first started working under him.

  “And if it’s okay with you,” he said, “I’m driving up with you. If I’ve put you in charge of this scene, I’d like to be your wingman.”

  “Sure,” she said, instantly hating the idea.

  As they walked out of the conference room, she looked around for Porter. It was funny in an ironic sort of way how much she’d prefer to share a car with Porter as this case drew to a close. Maybe it was familiarity or just the fact that she still felt like Nelson was a little too much of a chauvinist to take her seriously, despite praises from the FBI.

  But Porter had gotten lost in the shuffle and excitement as everyone had filed out of the conference room. She did not see him in the hallway as she stopped by her office to retrieve her badge and gun and he was nowhere to be found in the parking lot.

  Nelson met her at the car and it wasn’t even a question of who would drive. He instantly got behind the wheel and seemed very impatient as he waited for her to get into the passenger seat and buckle her seat belt. She did her best to hide her irritation but thought it really didn’t matter. Nelson was so caught up in the prospect of catching the Scarecrow Killer that she was basically an afterthought—just the cog in the mostly man-driven machine that had brought them this far.

  Suddenly, Ellington’s suggestion of trying to get into the FBI seemed more appealing than ever.

  “Ready to catch this asshole?” Nelson asked as they pulled out of the parking lot behind two patrol cars.

  Mackenzie bit at her bottom lip to hide the sarcastic smile that tried to spread there and said:

  “More than you know.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  Mackenzie’s phone started ringing less than ten minutes into her ride with Nelson. She checked the number on the display and although she had not yet saved it, it was fresh and familiar in her mind. She had nearly forgotten that Ellington had sent a text stating that he would call her. She knew he’d sent the text that morning but it seemed like a very long time ago. She checked the time on her phone’s task bar and saw that it was only 3:16. This day was turning out to be incredibly long.

  She ignored the call, not wanting to add another level of complexity to what was turning out to be an already chaotic afternoon. At the same time she was ignoring Ellington’s call, Nelson was on the phone with Nancy. He spoke curtly, straight and to the point. It was clear that he was on edge and beyond stressed out, something that Mackenzie was beginning to feel herself.

  He ended the call several seconds later and started nervously tapping at the steering wheel with his thumbs. “Nancy just spoke to the State boys,” he said. “They’ll have a helicopter flying over the area within an hour and a half.”

  “That’s good news,” Mackenzie said.

  “Tell me,” Nelson said. “Do you think he’s killing the women before he puts them on the poles or does he kill them there?”

  “There’s nothing solid to prove either way,” Mackenzie said. “However, the first scene in the cornfield makes me think the women are alive when he puts them on the poles. There were marks on the ground where the whip or whatever he uses was dragged.”

  “So?”

  “So, he was pacing. He was anxious and biding his time. If the woman was already dead, why wait around with the whip?”

  Nelson nodded and gave her a smile of appreciation. “We’re going to nail this bastard,” he said, still drumming on the steering wheel.

  Mackenzie badly wanted to join in on his enthusiasm, but something felt incomplete. She almost felt as if she had overlooked something but could not for the life of her figure out what it was. She remained quiet, pondering this silently, as Nelson drove on.

  They entered what Nelson was referring to as the Area of Interest twenty minutes later. She had listened to several brief phone calls from Nelson’s end during the drive and gathered that Nelson was setting up a perimeter of sorts to block in an area of thirty
square miles. The area consisted of mostly scrub land and secondary roads. A few of those secondary roads were surrounded by cornfields just like the site of the original crime scene that had started all of this madness.

  As Nelson drove them down such a road, the BC radio squawked at them. “Detective White, are you out there?” a man’s voice asked.

  Mackenzie looked to Nelson, as if for approval. He gestured to the CD radio installed under the dash with a smile. “Go ahead,” he said. “It’s your show.”

  Mackenzie unclasped the mic from the radio and clicked down the send button. “This is White. What have you got?”

  “I’m out here off of State Route 411 and came across a side road—nothing more than an old gravel road, really. The road heads straight into a cornfield and is not on the maps. It’s about half a mile long and dead ends into a small clearing in the cornfield.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Did you find something?”

  “That’s putting it lightly, Detective,” the officer on the other end said. “I think you need to get out here as fast as you can.”

  *

  It was beyond eerie to find herself standing in another cornfield. It was almost like she had come full circle, only it did not feel like she was coming to the end of something. Quite the contrary, it felt like she was starting all over.

  She stood at the edge of the clearing with Nelson and Officer Lent, the man that had contacted her on the radio. The three of them stood among the thinned cornstalks and looked out to the small clearing.

  A wooden pole had been erected in the middle of the clearing. Unlike the other poles they had recently seen that were identical to this one, there was no body strung up on it. The pole was bare and looked almost like some weird sort of ancient monolith in the empty clearing.

  Slowly, Mackenzie walked up to it. It was cedar, the same as the other three. She got down to her knees and felt the earth around the bottom of the pole. It was soft and had very obviously been loosened and then packed back down rather recently.

  “This pole hasn’t been here very long,” Mackenzie said. “The loose dirt is very fresh. I’d almost guess it was done earlier today.”

  “So he preps the sites before he brings his victims,” Nelson speculated. “I don’t know if that’s genius or cocky.”

  While Mackenzie was repulsed by the word genius being tied to the killer in any way, she ignored him. She went to the back of the pole and instantly spied the etchings along the bottom, several inches from the loose dirt that held the pole into the ground: N511/J202.

  “I wouldn’t say it’s either,” Mackenzie said. “What I do know is that he’s essentially left us his business card. We know he’s coming back, and he’ll probably have his latest victim with him.”

  As she got back to her feet, she was struck by a sense of vengeance that she had never felt before. The man behind these crimes had somehow shaken her. He had become a specter of sorts, a ghost with the ability to haunt her house, her mind, and her confidence. He had her jumping at the sound of creaking floorboards and getting to such a low point that she was hitting on larger-than-life FBI agents. He’d affected her so much that she hadn’t had the energy or emotion to care that Zack had finally left.

  On top of that, he was taking women as his victims simply because they used their bodies as a means to make a living. And who the hell was he to judge them for that?

  “I want to be here,” Mackenzie said. “I want to be on patrol or stakeout or whatever we do to make sure we catch him. I want to put the cuffs on the fucker.”

  She knew it sounded selfish, but she didn’t care. In that moment, she didn’t give a damn what Nelson thought of her. She didn’t care if he went back to the boys at the station and laughed about how the cute little woman had demanded things from him. Suddenly, catching the man behind these murders was more important than anything—including her job and her reputation.

  “I can see to that,” Nelson said with a smile. “Good to see a pissed off spark in you, White. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

  She bit back the remark that danced on her tongue, simply thinking it instead.

  Neither did I.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Mackenzie felt positive that the killer would not strike until night, and the others agreed with her. That gave them all four more hours of daylight to get ready for what they hoped would be a successful bust. Even if something did happen before nightfall, there were three patrol cars stationed along State Route 411, keeping an eye out for a vehicle entering the dirt road that led to the site the killer had prepared. With the addition of a State PD helicopter on the way to assist, it felt like a victory even before the sun was down.

  Mackenzie was in one of the unmarked cars along State Route 411, relieved to be by herself. Nelson had busied himself with heading back to the station to meet with an advisor from the State PD, allowing her to stay behind and keep her eyes on the scene and retain control of the case. Her car was parked a mile and a quarter away from the dirt road, partially hidden from 411 by having pulled backwards into the entrance to what had once been an old cutaway road farmers had used to get from one cornfield to the other.

  She’d been sitting there for fifteen minutes and the only car she’d seen go by was a police car, leaving the site and heading back to the station. She still felt certain that there would be no activity until well into the night and knew that she had a long stretch of waiting ahead of her. She wondered if Nelson had given her this duty to keep her out of his hair or if he saw it as giving her a position that kept her front and center of events as they unfolded.

  With a sigh and a glance out to the uneventful stretch of State Route 411, Mackenzie picked up her phone and stared at the missed call notification from where Ellington had tried calling her an hour and a half ago. She did her best not to recall the events of yesterday evening when she had made an ass of herself in his presence as she pressed the notification bar. When his number came up, she pressed it right away before she had time to change her mind.

  He answered on the third ring and when he did, she hated that it was so good to hear his voice. “Ellington here,” he said.

  “It’s Mackenzie White,” she said. “I was returning your call.”

  “Oh, hey! I hear you guys have a promising break.”

  “Seems like it, but time will tell. We found the next pole, already set up and ready to go.”

  “I heard. How do you feel about that?”

  “Good,” she said.

  “You sound doubtful.”

  “It just seems too good to be true. I feel like there’s something missing.”

  “Maybe there is,” Ellington said. “Your instincts are pretty sharp. I wouldn’t question them.”

  “I usually don’t.”

  An awkward silence fell between them and Mackenzie found herself digging for something new to talk about. He’d already heard about the break in the case, so it was useless to rehash it all. This is pathetic, Mackenzie, she thought.

  “So,” Ellington said, breaking the silence. “I took the liberty of working up a profile after I got word about the religious ties. The chances are very good that we’re looking for someone with religion in his background. Maybe even a priest or pastor, although history points to an upbringing in a strict religious home. Maybe he went to a private religious school. I’m also thinking he either had no mother at home or a mother that got around. He probably acted out as a kid—not in the extreme ways we’re seeing right now, but more basic kid-trouble.”

  “What’s all this based on?” she asked. “Just past cases?”

  “Yeah, mostly,” he said. “I can’t take the credit for these insights at all. But truth be told, it’s a formula that works about seventy percent of the time.”

  “Okay, so if this site doesn’t pan out, we keep an eye out for one of about one thousand possible suspects.”

  “Maybe not so many. Based on my profile, I also assume this guy is a local. If he’s mapping out
his own city, as you have pointed out, I’d say he grew up around there. And because of that, I made a few calls. There’s a Catholic grade school within sixty miles of Omaha. There’s one more in the state, but I’m betting the one closest to Omaha is going to be your best bet.”

  “That’s amazing,” Mackenzie said.

  “What is?”

  “Just like that, you’ve narrowed down the search and even have a potential source of background information.”

  “Well, the I in FBI does stand for investigation.” He laughed a bit at his own joke but when Mackenzie did not, he shut it down.

  “Thanks, Ellington.”

  “Sure. One last thing before you go, though.”

  “What’s that?” she asked, nervous, hoping he wouldn’t bring up her embarrassing advances of the night before.

  “When I gave my report to my director, I told him you were amazing and that I tried to sway you to the dark side.”

  She felt flattered.

  “The dark side being the Bureau?”

  “Right. Anyway, he seemed interested. So if you ever do get that itch to head out our way, I can give you his contact information. It might be a conversation worth having.”

  She thought this over and while she wanted to say more, to tell him how much she appreciated him, she only managed a simple “Thanks” in response. The very idea seemed too dreamlike. Great things like that tended not to happen to her.

  “You okay over there?” Ellington asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I need to go, though. This thing is wrapping up down here and I need to stay focused.”

  “I hear that. Go get ’em.”

  She grinned in spite of herself. While he may have been a larger-than-life figure to her, Ellington was also proving that he was just as cheesy and flawed as everyone else.