BEFORE HE LAPSES

by Blake Pierce

  “What about the other women? Lynch and Haley?”

  “I don’t remember them. I assume they are my Facebook friends because I may have met them at some event or another.”

  “Do you make a habit of picking up women at campaigns?” Ellington asked. “It’s not the noblest thing, but if we knew that for sure, it would answer some questions.”

  Humphrey was clearly embarrassed when he nodded his head. “Yes. That’s how I got Marie’s number.”

  “Off of some sort of registration list?” Harrison asked.

  “Off of the sign-ups to help with the campaigns. Me and another guy would put a little mark by women we found attractive. We’d make a point to hit them up after an event…make promises about letting them meet higher-ups…politicians, people in power.”

  “Classy,” Ellington said. “Did it work?”

  “Yes, a lot of the time. But…I don’t know. I sort of grew out of that. When Marie made me feel a little pathetic and unwanted…I started to realize how sad it was.”

  “Based on what you’re telling me, I’m going to ask you for alibis on the nights these three women were believed to have been killed.”

  “You said it was over the course of the last ten days or so?” Humphrey asked. There was a flicker of hope in his voice.

  “Yes. Ten or eleven days.”

  “Let me know the dates and I can give you my schedule. I’ve been all over the place recently. I just got back from DC three days ago. I was there for two days. Before that, I was in Raleigh, North Carolina, for a few days.”

  “Can you provide proof of that?” Ellington asked.

  “Not this very second. But I can get you enough to ease any suspicion within an hour or so.”

  “So I’m just supposed to let you go?”

  “No way,” Yardley said from the back. “Mr. Humphrey, my partner and I are going to follow you. Any proof you have, you can hand over to us. Agent Ellington, I believe you have other, more important places to be.”

  Ellington gave Humphrey a long stare before opening his door to head back to his own car.

  “Agent…?” Humphrey said.

  “What?” Ellington snapped.

  “If I provide a tip…it’s supposed to be anonymous, right? Like you can’t tell a suspect who it was exactly that called them out, right?”

  “Unless it is absolutely necessary to break that confidence. Why?”

  “Well…the other man that marked the names on the sign-up lists isn’t exactly the definition of integrity, either. I wouldn’t say he’s capable of murder but then again, I don’t know him all that well.”

  “Give me a name.”

  “Bruce Dumfries. He’s a lobbyist that tends to step on toes. Stays quiet, though. But he was always at those events. We…well, we sort of worked together when it came to trying to pick out women. He’s sort of a creep, you know?”

  “I’ll look into it,” Ellington said, restraining himself to not call Humphrey a name in return. “As for now, please be cooperative with these two agents. You make one sign of trouble for them and you will be arrested.”

  He didn’t even wait for a response or to watch Humphrey get out of the car and head back over to his friends who, even then, were just now getting into Humphrey’s car. A large part of Ellington wanted the so-called alibis to fall through. He wanted the case to be over so he could get Mackenzie back home safely. Because if he knew anything about his wife, it was that she would not stop until the case was closed—no matter the cost.

  The hell of it was that his gut told him that Humphrey was not their man. Otherwise, he would not have come to the car so easily and he certainly would not have offered up alibis so quickly.

  He quickly typed the name Bruce Dumfries into his Notepad app and then started his car. He turned it back to the hospital, his thoughts once again going back to solely his wife and his unborn child.

  A wife and child who were, in his eyes, at risk of danger until they returned back home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Mackenzie was staring at an old action flick on TV when Ellington came back into the hospital room just before ten o’clock. She was not really watching the movie, though; she was far more distracted by details of the case, wondering how every possible scenario might play out in her head. It was all she could think to do now that she was not actively involved with the case.

  When he came to the side of the bed, he took her hand right away and sank into the visitor’s chair. “How are you?”

  “Good. I signed the last of the discharge papers about half an hour ago. We’re good to get out of here. I got pain meds for my head and finger. And I’ve been advised to travel as little as possible for the next day or so on account of the concussion. So it looks like I’m not only going to be useless from here on out, but I’ll be stuck in a hotel room.”

  What she didn’t dare tell him was that she was relieved at this last wish. It meant she would be in the area for at least another ten to twelve hours, able to keep tabs on the progress of the case.

  As she got out of bed and started sorting through her personal items, she tried to seem as disinterested as she could. “Did you get to Humphrey?”

  “I did. Got to talk to him up close and personal. But no arrest. He didn’t put up too much of a fight and he says he has alibis for the last few days. Yardley and Harrison are tailing him until he can provide solid evidence of those alibis.” He then went on to tell her about the admitted history between Humphrey and Marie Totino.

  “Seems suspicious,” Mackenzie said.

  “I thought so, too. But he admitted to using campaign assistant sign-ups to target women he thought were hot. He said there was another man that helped him do it, some lobbyist named Dumfries.”

  “Anyone looking into him?”

  “I spoke with McGrath on the way here. He said he’d start looking into it for now and wants me to run with it as soon as we get you back to the hotel.”

  Mackenzie didn’t say anything else as they underwent the process of checking out of the hospital. She didn’t want to seem like a spoiled brat who wasn’t getting her way by not taking an active part in the case. But she also didn’t want to ask a trillion questions and come off as being needy. The way she figured it, Ellington would fill her in when it was appropriate.

  Still, she found herself lost in thought as Ellington completed the drive back to the hotel. She thought of the organizational structure of a political campaign in particular. She wondered why someone like Daniel Humphrey decided to help organize campaigns and rallies for politicians rather than being a politician himself. Sure, there had to be a desire for power there, but it was almost like a passive sort of power…like watching someone powerful from afar.

  Maybe even someone that takes pleasure in doing favors for people in power, Mackenzie thought. Someone just like a lobbyist, the very sort of man Humphrey claimed had helped him cull the sign-up lists for young women.

  As they pulled into the hotel parking lot, Ellington received another call. Mackenzie frowned at this, knowing full well that at McGrath’s instruction, Yardley and Harrison would not be calling her for assistance. And because Yardley and Harrison were now on the case, Deputy Wheeler would not be reaching out to them, either.

  She listened to Ellington’s side of the conversation as he parked the car. He stayed in the car as he finished up, Mackenzie listening in and trying to figure out the context of the conversation. She felt tired and it was rather hard to concentrate. She figured it was another result of the concussion—a concussion the doctor had said was not too severe but nothing to be taken lightly, either.

  He was off of the phone three minutes later. He didn’t even both reaching for the door handle, knowing that Mackenzie was going to want to be filled in.

  “A couple of things,” he said. “That was Harrison. They’ve got a pretty perfect still frame of the guy that came into the hotel asking for you. No ID match yet, but they expect one within a few hours. Second thing…Humphrey
has more than enough to back up the fact he wasn’t in Baltimore when these women were killed. Plane tickets, receipts from restaurants and bars in DC. He says there’s also several people we could call that can confirm he was there as well.”

  “So now we start going after this Dumfries character?”

  “Bruce Dumfries…yeah. But…you said we. I’m pretty sure McGrath would have me hanged if I let you help me on it.”

  “Probably.” She wasn’t necessarily upset with him over McGrath’s decisions, but she did feel a bit like a child because of the intense jealousy that went spiraling through her. “It just sucks. I know it sounds immature, but that’s the best way to put it. I was attacked. The fact that I won’t be present to nail whoever was behind it stings a bit.”

  They walked to the hotel room hand in hand. When they got inside, Mackenzie felt the need for a shower—to get the fight off of her, to get the hospital stay off of her. And then she was going so rest. She figured that because she was now off of the case and injured (and, she thought, let’s not forget pregnant), she might as well just sleep until Ellington woke her up and told her it was time to go back to DC. What better way to keep a case from itching at her than to sleep through its inevitable conclusion?

  You’re depressed, she told herself as she started to undress. The pregnancy is making you overreactive…the emotions, the hormones, the fact that you fought off two armed men…it’s a lot.

  She figured she was depressed. The only light at the end of the tunnel was that it sounded as if the case was moving in the right way. With a lead like Daniel Humphrey falling through the cracks, it was hard not to feel a little hopeless.

  “I’m getting in the shower,” she said. “Will you still be here when I get out or are you rushing over to the precinct?”

  “I should still be here.” He gave her a once-over as she walked into the bathroom in noting more than her underwear. “I mean this in a strictly helpful sense, you having a concussion and all. But do you need help?”

  She smirked at him. “No, I think I’ll be fine.”

  He watched her until she turned the water on and stepped into the shower. The feel of his eyes on her always made her feel a little invigorated but even that did very little to lift her spirits. She stood under the water for a while, letting the steam soak into her, before she slowly washed off. As her hands passed over her stomach, she looked down to it with a frown.

  Sorry, she thought. We had a close call today. And that’s on me. Mommy promises to be smarter from here on out. But hey…you already survived your first shootout…so that’s exciting.

  For reasons she could not quite understand, this little semi-telepathic conversation with her baby put a smile on her face. She could totally understand how some women claimed to have felt a link to their babies from just a few weeks into the pregnancy. And for now, if she needed to, she knew she could rely on her new duty of being a protective mother to help get her through her lack of action at the end of this case.

  ***

  Ellington headed out shortly after midnight. Mackenzie could tell that he was feeling guilty about having to leave her behind so she hid her own feelings of feeling left out as best as she could. She lay in bed, staring into the dark and trying to sort out her place in it all. They had been checked into a new room and profusely apologized to for what had happened earlier in the day. It had added just one more surreal exclamation point to the day.

  That’s just it, she told herself. You have no place in this. This is not your case any longer. Sit back and watch everyone else wrap it up.

  It was sound advice, but everyone else had not endured an ass-kicking and managed to fend off two armed men. As immature as it might seem, Mackenzie could not let that go. She was taking it personally now and felt that she had the right to come face-to-face with not only those two men again, but with whoever had sent them after her.

  It was next to impossible for her to go to sleep, knowing that while she was lying here, feeling useless, three agents she worked with (and one she was particularly intimate with) were in the process of trying to wrap a case that now seemed as slippery as ever. She would have given anything to have access to a live feed of the precinct, just to stay abreast of everything.

  Her laptop had been cracked during the fight earlier in the day, so even if she wanted to pull up the case files, she wouldn’t be able to. She was literally stranded in this motel room with only the television to keep her company.

  She went to her suitcase and dug out the bottle of melatonin she sometimes packed on trips. It had been especially helpful back when nightmares of Nebraska had haunted her and ever since then, she had not had to rely on it much. But she took it now, desperately wanting sleep to take her away from several hours.

  But even then, half an hour later when she felt the drug starting to take effect, the case was still on her mind. Something about the profile of the killer continued to throw her off. The mix of power and caution, of dominance and inexperience. It made for an interesting mix and the more she thought about it, the harder it was to come up with a fitting profile. Daniel Humphrey did indeed seem to fit her profile but now that he was out of the picture where did they go from here? Looking for a man who craved power and got it by rubbing shoulders with those who wielded it rather than seeking it out for himself?

  There’s something there, she thought. Something about power and his inability to grasp it. But what?...

  It was a question that rang out just soon enough for her to regret taking the melatonin. As it was, she could only grasp for the thought like a drowning woman at sea just before the crashing waves of sleep swept her away.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  When she woke up the following morning, she didn’t even waste time getting out of bed or brushing her teeth. She sat up in bed, picked up her phone, and called Ellington. She figured there must at least be some form of lucrative line on Bruce Dumfries or else he would have returned to catch some sleep. That, or he had been unfortunate enough to get caught up in the monotonous task of verifying all of Humphrey’s alibis.

  After the fourth ring, she expected the call to go to voicemail, so she was quite happy to hear his voice when he finally answered.

  “Good morning, beautiful,” he answered.

  “Same to you. Late night?”

  “Yeah. In looking into Bruce Dumfries, we found out that he and Holland seemed to have once been friends So we did some digging there as well. I’m headed back out to talk to him later this morning. That man is going to be tired of seeing me.”

  “What do we know about Dumfries?”

  “There’s not much on him. He donates money to causes that are mostly left leaning, though he has some support on the right side of the aisle. He seems like the kind of man that keeps quiet. Does all of his work in the shadows, not wanting attention.”

  “So what happens now?” Mackenzie asked.

  “I suppose I’ll end up paying a visit to Bruce Dumfries. I’m hoping my visit to Holland will at least give me some direction, though; for right now, the only link between Dumfries and the victims is the fact that Humphrey called him out.”

  “Sounds like a wild goose chase,” she commented.

  “Feels like one, too. So…yeah. I’m going to finish up here. Some paperwork, last-minute stuff with Wheeler, and then pay Holland a visit. If I have time, I’ll go chat with Dumfries. I think McGrath might be okay if I had to stay all day on that. But after that…”

  “Then back home?”

  “Yeah. And if your noggin is feeling better, maybe I can finally carry you across the threshold.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” she said. But she knew he was likely detecting the disappointment in her voice. If he did, he said nothing about it.

  “See you in a bit,” was all he said. “Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, considering her options. She could remain where she was like a good little girl and just wait for every
one else to do the work. She knew that’s what she should do.

  But something felt wrong…something felt off.

  She thought of a man like Humphrey, craving power so badly that he would essentially become a lapdog for someone who hadn’t yet even become powerful—someone like Neil Rooney who just had a following. Maybe she had been wrong in coming up with a profile. Maybe someone like Humphrey, craving power from a secondary standpoint, wouldn’t be capable of murder. To kill someone, you had to take control. You had to be confident enough to make that decision and wield that dark power.

  It didn’t fit with a man who made his living as a lobbyist like Dumfries, either, though. Lobbyists tended to support others, to often throw money at causes to help those causes gain control. Unless the control came from actually giving the money and feeling the cause owed you. It was an interesting line of thought for sure.

  She stopped thinking of potential suspects for a moment. Instead, she revisited Christine Lynch’s apartment in her head. She saw the political science textbooks and biographies on the shelves. She then thought of her time spent in Marie Totino’s bedroom—the fliers, brochures, even the little campaign button.

  What am I missing? What did we not see?

  She then tried to apply all of that scattered evidence to what they knew of the case so far: the similarities, the links, the leads that had come to nothing.

  Slowly, she got up. She had a plan—a plan that Ellington was not going to like. A plan that McGrath would certainly disapprove of.

  She looked down to her belly and rubbed it. “It’s okay, baby. There’s no harm in this. This is safe.”

  She went to Ellington’s suitcase, hopeful that she’d find what she was looking for. While he wasn’t very organized at heart, he was a creature of routine. She knew that he liked to pack extras of certain equipment—an extra clip for his gun, a backup badge, two flashlights, an extra lock-pick set.