BEFORE HE LAPSES

by Blake Pierce

  He led them to a small conference room where an older woman sat at a table. She was sipping from a cup of tea when they entered. Mackenzie thought she might be of Filipino descent from the shade of her skin. She looked a little nervous, almost like she regretted even coming forward with her information.

  “Agents,” Wheeler said, “this is Hazel Isidro. She came forward with some information you might find helpful in the Christine Lynch case.”

  With that said, Wheeler seemed unsure if he should stay or so. He opted to simply stand by the door while Mackenzie and Ellington took seats at the small table.

  “I understand you live in the same building as Christin Lynch did,” Mackenzie said.

  “That’s right,” Hazel said. “She was on the third floor. I live on the second.”

  “Did you know her well?”

  “Not well. But she was a very friendly young lady. On two different occasions over the past half a year or so, she happened to be coming into the building the same time as me after I had gone grocery shopping. She insisted on helping me with my bags. A very friendly young lady for sure. But we did not speak much, no.”

  “Did you ever see her with a man?” Ellington asked.

  “I saw her leaving with a young man a few times. Two or three times, maybe. She never introduced him.”

  “Do you recall what he looked like?”

  “Not really. Just brown hair, close cut. A handsome young man for sure.”

  “Young, as in Christine’s age?” Mackenzie asked.

  “I’d say so, yes.”

  Mackenzie and Ellington shared a look and had one of those nearly telepathic moments good partners (and, she had heard, husbands and wives) often shared. Probably Clark Manners, they both seemed to think toward one another.

  “Okay, so share with us the information you came to the precinct with today,” Mackenzie said.

  “Well, it was three nights ago. I’d been suffering with this awful toothache all day. Took some Motrin for it but it barely touched it. I went to sleep and woke up around one in the morning with it hurting like crazy. I was in tears from the pain. So I walked out to the Walgreens two blocks down from the apartment building and got some high-strength stuff. On the way back, I opened the door and when I did, this man approached me from behind. Asked me to hold the door. Usually, at such an hour, I probably would have thought it was sort of sketchy and not held the door. But I was just in so much pain and wanted to get back to bed…I didn’t even think twice about it.”

  “Did you get a good look at him?” Ellington asked.

  “No. He was wearing this black hoodie…most of his head was covered. It was one of those moments that, even though I was in pain, I realized how stupid it was for me to let him in and…”

  She stopped here and looked up at them with sorrow in her eyes. A thought was coming to her, dawning on her as if the thought had not crossed her mind until that very moment.

  “My God…is it my fault? Did I let the killer in? Is it my fault she’d dead?”

  “It’s far too early to even begin making such claims,” Mackenzie said. “We don’t even know that this man you let in was the man that killed Christine.”

  Hazel nodded, but it was obvious that she seemed uncertain. Slowly, she went on. “I took the elevator up mainly because I was tired and in pain and just…out of it, you know? But this man went right for the stairs. He moved quickly, sort of like he was in a hurry. When he passed by the elevator, that’s when I got the best look at him. Just a bit of his face, from around the side of the hood.”

  “Any guess as to what his age might be?” Ellington asked.

  “No, sorry.”

  “Any chance it might have been the young man you’d seen Christine with?” Mackenzie asked.

  “No, I don’t think so. This man was much taller. Easily half a foot taller than I am. Maybe a little over six feet tall.”

  “Can you be as accurate as possible about the timeframe of all of this?”

  “Well, it was sometime after twelve thirty when I woke up; I don’t remember the exact time. But I clearly remember that it was one ten when I settled back into bed because I did the sleep-math to see how much sleep I’d end up getting. So it was probably right around twelve forty when I let that man into the building.”

  Mackenzie turned back to Wheeler. “Can you get your guys to go back through the video footage to look for Ms. Isidro and this man in the black hoodie?”

  “Absolutely,” Wheeler said, taking his leave right away.

  “Can I ask, why did you wait so long to come forward with this?” Ellington asked.

  “Well, I honestly didn’t even think about it again. I ended up going to the dentist the following day and it just sort of went out of my mind. But then this morning, one of my neighbors told me about Christine and it came roaring back. That’s when I realized just how shady that man seemed…and how I really sort of screwed up by letting him in.”

  “Again,” Mackenzie said, “we can’t automatically assume the two things are related.” Though based on the timeline, she thought, there might be a very good chance they are.

  “Does this neighbor maybe know more about Christine than you did?” Mackenzie asked.

  “I don’t think so. She—”

  She was interrupted as the door to the conference room came flying open. Wheeler leaned in—the front half of his body leaning in and everything from the stomach down still out. He looked a little excited, a little scared.

  “Sorry, agents,” he said, the excitement also clear in his voice. “But we just got a dispatch call from a unit that’s out on patrol. We found another body.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The body had been discovered along the banks of the Patapsco River, on a dry bank about twenty-five minutes away from campus. When Mackenzie and Ellington arrived with Deputy Wheeler in tow, the original two policemen who had discovered the body were still there. Their patrol car was parked on the side of the road inconspicuously, hiding the sight of the river that flowed below a small decline beyond the ditch at the side of the road. Fortunately, it was a secondary road and the traffic wasn’t too bad.

  Mackenzie barely stopped to speak to the officers as she made her way to the ditch and the wooded area beyond. “Who discovered the body?” she asked.

  “A Department of Transportation crew,” one of the officers said. “They were out here to remove a deer that had been hit on the side of the road, about thirty feet down that way,” he said, nodding to the left. “Said he just happened to see something weird sticking up out of the water out there.”

  “Is the scene untouched?” she asked.

  “Yeah. We only saw the body and called it in. Haven’t touched a single thing.”

  Mackenzie and Ellington made their way into the thin strip of woodland that separated the secondary road from the bank of the Patapsco. Wheeler elected to stay behind with his fellow officers.

  Even before they made it into the tree line, she could see the outline of what was clearly a human leg, sticking out of the water and partially grounded along the bank. She found it easily believable that anyone driving at a slow speed—just like a Department of Transportation vehicle having just picked up a deer carcass—would be able to see it if they happened to be looking out of their window.

  They came to the bank and more of the body came into view. As they neared the water, all of the details came into focus. The victim was a young woman—probably somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four. She had been stripped completely naked. There were faint streaks of red in her blonde hair, likely blood. There were small scrapes and cuts along most of her body. The most prominent feature, though, was that her right arm had clearly been broken. It was bent back at an angle, raised over her head where it was bound to her left wrist.

  “Well, the age range certainly fits,” Ellington said.

  Mackenzie nodded as she went to her haunches to get a better look. The woman’s body was mostly on its back, but tilted up just enoug
h by the bank and a stray log that had caught her body and, likely, had been the cause of her being mired in this location. The parts of the woman’s back and buttocks that Mackenzie could see were very scratched up. A few areas looked as if someone had taken a sheet of sandpaper to her flesh. Most of those nicks and scratches were still bleeding.

  “She hasn’t been dead long,” she commented. “Sure, she’s pale, but that’s because she’s been exposed to water that’s barely above freezing. But a lot of these wounds are still bleeding.”

  “You think this was just a killer being lazy in disposing of the body or what?”

  “No. The abrasions on her back seem to mostly be going in the same direction. I think she was dumped elsewhere and the river carried her here.”

  “So she was dumped somewhere from up that way,” Ellington said, pointing in the direction the river was lazily drifting from.

  “It feels…off. The others were strangled and left where they were. Being dumped in a river is a huge leap from that.”

  “I’ll give you that,” Ellington said. “But we have to consider the age. And while I hate to say it about a dead woman, she’s what most would consider attractive—like the other two.”

  “We need to ID her,” Mackenzie said. “And if we start by secluding the search to only Queen Nash students, we’ll know if this body is linked to Jo Haley and Christine Lynch pretty quickly.”

  “I don’t see evidence of strangulation,” Ellington said. “You?”

  “No.” But still, something about the way the body had been discarded made her go back to a particular train of thought she’d entertained while trying to get back to sleep from her nightmare.

  Jo Haley’s death seemed to have been thought out. The killer had sex with her, then strangled her. Then with Christine, he was more cautious, more direct. While there might have been some sexual activity between them, they did not have intercourse and she was simply strangled.

  Maybe with this one, he was trying to be even more careful. Perhaps that’s why she’s been bound. Or maybe he found himself in a bigger hurry. Maybe he’s even starting to realize how similar his murders seem and is trying to vary things…

  “Your gut is usually right,” Ellington said. “As your husband, that’s difficult to say. But it’s true. What’s it say about this?”

  She didn’t hesitate much before she answered: “I think if we start with just searching Queen Nash records, we’ll have an ID on this girl by nightfall. I also think if she was assigned William Holland as an advisor, he’s going to see the inside of an interrogation room very soon.”

  As if summoned by the urgency of the situation and Mackenzie’s comment, Wheeler came walking through the brush. He seemed to take great pains to not look at the body. “Thought you might want to know that Forensics is on the way. They’re about ten minutes out.”

  Mackenzie only nodded. She looked back down to the body—a beautiful female in the prime of her life. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s daughter with a future that would never be fully realized.

  Habitually, Mackenzie’s hand once again found the minuscule bulge in her stomach and remained there, as if protecting what was inside.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Mackenzie and Ellington were working in one of the precinct’s smaller conference rooms when a positive ID of the victim from the river came in. It was 6:27 and, working under Mackenzie’s guidance of narrowing the fingerprint and facial recognition search to Queen Nash University students, it had been a much easier process than it might have been.

  Wheeler entered the room with a printout and happily slid it across the table to them. “Positive ID,” he said.

  Mackenzie picked up the paper and read some of the highlights out loud. As she did, a stirring of excitement started to come alive in her stomach. That, she thought with a trace of irony, or the baby senses your excitement.

  “Marie Totino, twenty years of age. Currently enrolled at Queen Nash in her junior year. Political science major. She’s done some interning in DC and with the state government for Maryland. Lives in Baltimore, close to campus. Originally from Bethesda.”

  “Any word on her academic advisor?” Ellington asked.

  “It’s listed as Charles McMahon.”

  “Also,” Wheeler reported, “Forensics did find some harsh marks around the base of her neck. Might be evidence of strangulation. We’ll know for sure after the autopsy, I’d guess. There was also a large bruise on her head and a small fracture in the skull within that area. They also found residue around her mouth that indicates her mouth had been taped shut at some point.”

  “Any idea when she was last seen?” Mackenzie asked.

  “We’ve got a few guys working on that right now. The family is being notified as we speak. Marie was an only child. Both parents still alive, living in Bethesda. There could be more, but I literally got all of this information just as that sheet came in.”

  Mackenzie and Ellington got to their feet, starting to work in a kind of sync that felt natural yet, at the same time, almost supernatural in a way. They were going to have to speak with the family. Mackenzie hated speaking with aggrieved loved ones so close to getting the traumatic news of the passing of someone they cared about, but timing was everything on this case. With a third body discovered and now identified as another student, there was no way to keep the story contained—especially now that classes had resumed.

  “Where are you on finding anything relevant on the security footage from Christine Lynch’s apartment building?”

  “Nothing of use. We have the guy coming in from the front and the western side, but his face is never shown. We even have the moment where he and Hazel Isidro cross paths, but there’s only the slightest bit of his face. The tip of a nose and just a flash of brow. Nothing we can use to ID.”

  “I’d like to see that footage when we get back,” Mackenzie said. “For now, though, we’re going to need the home address of Marie Totino’s family.”

  “Sure,” Wheeler said. “I’ll get that for you right now.”

  Wheeler left them and the moment the door closed, Ellington took Mackenzie’s hand. “Remember when I threatened to play my protective husband card?”

  “I do. It was funny.”

  “I’m being serious,” he said. “Mac, do you really think it’s the best idea for you to be speaking to a woman that just lost her daughter? If you think I haven’t noticed your hand going to your belly whenever something stressful comes up, you’re blind.”

  His care for her was heartwarming but she also felt like he was maybe being a little too overprotective. She honestly didn’t think it was worth an argument, though. “Fine,” she said. “You take the lead when we get there then.”

  He looked at her for a moment and she was pretty certain she could read the thought behind his eyes. He thinks I should have stayed at home on this one. He thinks it was a mistake not to tell McGrath about my pregnancy.

  Maybe he was right. But they were too deep into this now, so there was no sense in dwelling on it.

  “Let’s just try to wrap this thing as quickly as we can,” Ellington said. “Then we won’t have to worry about these things.”

  “With that sort of in-depth thinking, you should definitely be leading,” she said with a thin smile.

  “Oh my God, I hope our kid doesn’t get your smart-ass streak.”

  With that, they left the conference room in search of Wheeler and the address of a family that had just lost their daughter to what appeared to be a serial killer.

  ***

  True to her word, Mackenzie let Ellington take the lead when they arrived at the Totino house thirty-five minutes later. And honestly, she was glad he was taking the lead role. The parents—fifty-two-year-old Sandra Totino and fifty-seven year old Mike Totino—were a little less than an hour into their new lives without a child. The news was so fresh that the police who had visited to break the news were just making their way back to their patrol car as Mackenzie and Ellington arr
ived.

  Now, fifteen minutes later, they were sitting in the Totinos’ living room. Sandra looked to be in a daze, rocking back and forth from her place the couch and looking to the floor. It was Mike, the father, who did all of the talking. Mackenzie was pretty sure the only thing that was allowing him to have any sort of rational conversation with them was his anger—at a killer that had taken his daughter…at a killer he wanted very badly to be caught and brought to justice as quickly as possible.

  “Your daughter makes the third female student that has been killed in less than two weeks,” Ellington said once the Totinos had managed to get some semblance of emotional order to themselves. It was clear they both had a long way to go (and understandably so) but Mike was hanging on by sheer anger alone.

  “Why in God’s name would someone target Marie, though?” Mike Totino asked.

  “That’s exactly what we’re hoping you can help us with. We believe that all of the victims had some sort of relationship with the killer—be it a simple friendship or something more intimate.”

  “I don’t believe Marie had a boyfriend,” Mike said. He then added, with a bit of venom in his voice: “If that’s what you’re insinuating.”

  Ellington let the jab slide right by, unaffected. “We believe that if we can find just one link between the victims, it might help us get that much closer to identifying the killer. Do you know any of Marie’s close friends?”

  “That’s what makes this so hard. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Marie doesn’t have…didn’t have…any friends…” He stopped here, clearly gulping down a sob. It took him several seconds to get composure before he continued on again. “These last several months, she hung out with this political group. They put on these rallies and fundraisers, you know? She mentioned a few names here and there, but I never paid much attention to the names. How about you, dear?”