by Cindi Myers
She shook her head. “I don’t even go there,” she said. “Even if it could be done, why would anyone do it? These are good jobs, hard to come by. Most people who get them really appreciate them.” Her eyes met his, her expression daring him to disagree.
“I hear you,” he said. “My wife and I feel lucky, getting hired on here. I just hate to think of anyone trying to do something like that, messing everything up for the rest of us.”
“If anyone had, they’d be out of here before they knew what hit them,” she said.
“Has anyone been fired recently?” he asked.
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t see how that concerns you. Now come on, let’s head over to the box sealer. You’ll like that one—you actually have to operate the cutter.”
He spent the next two hours pressing down on a lever to cut the tape that sealed the top of each box. Not any more exciting than his previous position, but it did require the use of one hand.
He thought about heading upstairs and seeing if Laura wanted to have lunch with him, then thought better of it. Lunch was his best opportunity to interact with his fellow factory workers. While Laura played the role of his wife well enough in public, he didn’t sense she relished acting the part more often than necessary.
Still, she wasn’t as bad as he had feared she would be. After the first day, she made no complaints about living in a house trailer or giving up her designer clothing. He hadn’t been surprised to learn she was a military brat with an accounting degree, but when she had talked about her background he had glimpsed the geeky girl who never lived in one place long enough to make fast friends.
She was an intriguing combination of prickly and soft. It was like she couldn’t allow herself to enjoy life. He’d seen that in the military—people so scared of losing control, they clung to the regulations like a lifeline. Do what you’re told and you’ll be safe.
Except you were never safe. Not really. Obey all the rules and an IED could still take you out when you were crossing the street. Eat all the right things, do all the right things, and cancer could still show up one day when you least expected it. People like Laura clung to the illusion of control instead of surrendering to the reality that they had none.
She would no doubt be horrified to know he had thought of her that way for even one moment. Smiling to himself at her imagined reaction, he collected his lunch from his locker and made his way to the break room. He sat at a table with some coworkers he recognized, opened the lunch bag and studied the contents. Laura had insisted on making lunch this morning. He had another ham sandwich but with mustard, not mayonnaise, and lettuce, tomato, onion—and was that cucumber on top? Instead of chips, he had carrots and celery sticks.
“You don’t look too happy with your lunch.” The man to his left, whose coveralls identified him as Ed, said.
“My wife’s trying to get me to eat healthier.” He picked the cucumber slices off the sandwich and set them aside. At least Laura had packed Oreos. For all her love of vegetables, she had a sweet tooth.
“She’s the new admin in the office, right?” Phyllis, across from him, asked. “The pretty blonde.”
Jace nodded. “Yeah, we were really lucky to both get jobs here. I heard these jobs were hard to come by.”
“You came along at the right time,” Phyllis said. “They needed someone to fill Benny Cagle’s position.”
“What happened to Benny Cagle?” Jace took a bite of the ham sandwich. It wasn’t bad, but it would have been better with mayo.
“He got fired.” Ed crunched down on a grape.
“Why’d he get fired?” Jace asked.
“He had a problem with drugs,” Phyllis said. “Heroin.”
“I heard it was meth,” said a woman down the table.
“No, it was heroin,” Phyllis said.
“When was he fired?” Jace asked.
“Oh, I guess it was a couple weeks ago now,” Ed said.
“He kept showing up late for work—or not showing up at all,” Phyllis said. “Everybody saw it coming, but you can’t really talk to someone under the influence, can you?” She shrugged.
“Is he still here in town?” Jace asked.
“I heard he went to live with his sister in Vicksburg,” Phyllis said.
“You play softball?” Ed asked Jace.
“Not in a long time,” Jace said. “Why?”
“We got a coed team through the local rec league,” Ed said. “You look like you could handle a bat.”
“I’ll think about it. Thanks.” Though, with any luck, he’d be long gone by the time the season was in full swing.
Laura was waiting by the truck when Jace emerged into the parking lot later that afternoon. A soft breeze stirred her hair and fluttered the ruffles along the neck of her blouse. Jace faltered a little, struck by how pretty she looked. Not like the no-nonsense fed he’d come to know.
She spotted him and sent him an annoyed look. He started walking again, not hurrying. She never liked to wait. “How was your day?” he asked as he clicked the key fob to unlock the truck.
She opened the door and swung inside. “I got the name of an employee who was fired just a week ago,” she said.
“Yeah. Benny Cagle.” He started the truck and turned the air-conditioning up to full.
“Oh. You knew?” There was no hiding her disappointment.
“Some of my coworkers were talking about him at lunch today,” Jace said. “They said he got canned for drugs—heroin or meth.”
“The official file says he was fired for failing to show up for work and chronic tardiness,” she said.
“Easier to prove than drugs,” Jace said. “Probably looks better to insurance companies, too.” He glanced at her. “Somebody said he’s in Vicksburg, living with his sister.”
“We need to make sure he didn’t come back to town and plant a bomb,” she said.
They spent the rest of the drive to their trailer debating the best way to investigate Cagle. As Jace turned into the driveway, Laura fell silent. Two big cardboard boxes leaned against the steps of the trailer. “What is that?” she asked, tense with wariness.
“That’s your new bed.” He climbed out of the truck and she followed.
“You ordered a bed delivered?” she asked, eyeing the boxes.
“Sure. Why not?” He examined the boxes then tapped the larger one. “This is the frame.” He tapped the other box. “And this is the mattress.” She was still frowning, so he added, “You needed a bed. We don’t have time to shop.”
She met his gaze, her expression softer. “Thank you,” she said. “That was very thoughtful of you.”
He looked away. She didn’t have to act like he’d donated a kidney. “If you’ll make dinner, I’ll put all this together,” he said, gesturing toward the boxes.
Dinner was pasta and chicken in some kind of sauce, which was good, and steamed broccoli—not his favorite, but he ate it because he was hungry. “The pasta is good,” he said when they were done.
“It’s lemon pepper chicken. I don’t cook often,” she said. “But I can cook.”
“I never said you couldn’t.” He stood and helped clear the table, then touched her shoulder and turned her toward the door to the rest of the house. “Come see your new bed.”
He’d chosen a simple metal frame, antique-looking, and one of those foam mattresses that expanded as soon as you unboxed it. Laura walked around it, surveying it from every angle, then sat on the edge of the mattress.
“How is it?” he asked, immediately annoyed that he cared what she thought.
“Better than the couch.”
“That’s all you can say?” He sat beside her and gave a little bounce. “Feels pretty good to me. Better than what I’ve got.”
Then he saw the smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. She’d been playing him for sure. Sh
e burst out laughing. “It’s great, Jace. Thanks.”
She looked so pretty when she smiled. Approachable. He leaned toward her, the flowers-and-vanilla scent of her swirling around him. Their eyes met and her lips parted. So inviting...
His phone rang, and they both jumped to their feet. Heart pounding, he fumbled for the phone, avoiding her eyes. What had almost happened there? Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to happen again. “Hello,” he barked into the phone.
“I’m sending you a report on Leo Elgin,” Rogers said. “He’s somebody we definitely want to take a closer look at.”
“Why?” Jace asked.
“You’ll see.” Rogers ended the call.
Jace stuffed the phone back in his coveralls. “That was Rogers. He said...”
“I heard.” Laura headed for the living room and Jace followed. By the time he reached her, she had her laptop up and running and was accessing the report. “This says Leo Elgin is employed by a firm in Nashville that makes sophisticated security systems for businesses and high-end homes,” she said.
“That might give him the skill to create a bomb like the one that went off at the factory. The bomb itself was simple, but the trigger required a little sophistication,” Jace said.
“Oh.”
The single syllable was freighted with meaning—awe, dismay, interest. “What is it?” he asked and moved in beside her, shoulders brushing.
“Leo Elgin had some trouble in high school,” she said. Her eyes met his, reflecting both fear and anger. “He was jailed briefly for giving a bomb to a teacher.”
Chapter Five
Six for six.
The three words, bold print in a twenty-point font, stood out on the torn piece of printer paper. “It was in a plain envelope, addressed to me, in this morning’s mail.” Donna Stroud spoke calmly, only her tightly clenched hands betraying her agitation.
Ana examined the envelope, which she had already placed in a clear evidence pouch. It bore a local postmark, no return address, and had been mailed the day before. The paper that accompanied it looked like plain copy paper, torn in half. “What do you think it means?” Ana asked.
The vertical line between Donna’s eyebrows deepened. “Six people died from the tainted Stomach Soothers,” she said. “But I don’t know what ‘six for six’ means.”
“We’ll see if we can get any fingerprints or other evidence from this.” Ana slipped the evidence envelopes into her jacket. “Did anyone else in the office see this?”
“Merry Winger puts the mail on my desk, so she probably saw it. She collects it from the mailroom about nine thirty each morning. Someone in the mailroom would have seen it when they sorted it.”
“Where can I find Merry?”
“Her desk is just to the left of the door to the outer office. She’s the pretty blonde.”
Merry was indeed a pretty blonde, all bouncy curls and dramatic eye makeup, including spider-like fake eyelashes. “May I help you?” she asked when Ana approached her desk.
Ana showed her identification. “Do you remember putting this on Mrs. Stroud’s desk this morning?” she asked.
Merry leaned forward and studied the envelope in its clear evidence pouch. She wrinkled her nose. “It might have been in with the other mail, but I don’t really notice.” She sat back and shrugged.
“What’s your routine for handling the mail?” Ana asked.
“I go down the hall to the mailroom about nine thirty and collect whatever is in the boxes for this office. Dennis, the mail clerk, sorts everything after the carrier delivers it. I distribute everything for this office. Mrs. Stroud usually has the biggest stack. It used to be Mr. Stroud, but now that he’s retired, Mrs. S gets everything that isn’t addressed to accounting or personnel or a specific person.”
“So you would have sorted this letter into the stack to go to Mrs. Stroud?”
“Well, yeah, but I just toss anything that isn’t for anyone else into her pile. I don’t stop and read anything or pay much attention.” She leaned forward again, eyes bright with interest. “Why? Is that letter from the bomber?”
“Why do you think it might be from the bomber?” Ana asked.
“Well, duh! You’re from the FBI, and you’ve got that envelope all sealed up in that pouch. If it was junk mail you wouldn’t treat it that way.”
“We don’t know who the letter is from,” Ana said. “I’m trying to find out.”
“Sorry, I can’t help you,” Merry said.
“If you think of anything, let me know.” Ana handed her card to the young woman and headed to the mail room, where Dennis told her he hadn’t noticed anything unusual about the letter either.
Back at the situation room at the local police department that she and Rogers were using as their workspace, Rogers examined the letter and envelope. “‘Six for six,’” he said. “A reference to the six people who were killed by the poisoned Stomach Soothers?”
“Donna Stroud thinks so.” Ana studied the three words. “Maybe the bomber is saying he—or she—plans to kill six people in retaliation for the six who died.”
“Kill as in set more bombs?”
“We don’t know, do we?” She sank into one of the rolling desk chairs the local police had provided them. “People are poisoned and someone responds by planting a bomb. Where’s the logic in that?”
“It makes sense to the bomber—our job is to get into his head and figure out how.”
“Leo Elgin made it clear he blamed the Strouds for killing his mother,” Ana said. “He has the skills to build a bomb and a history of making a bomb threat. It shows us he thinks of a bomb as a weapon.”
Rogers nodded. “It’s past time we talked to Leo.”
* * *
“THE BOMB I gave Mrs. Pepper wasn’t real,” Leo said. “It was just a bunch of highway flares taped together and wired to a clock. Anyone with sense would have seen right away it was a fake. Which was the whole point, because Mrs. Pepper didn’t have any sense.”
Leo Elgin stared across the table at Ana, deep shadows beneath his eyes like smudges of soot, his hair falling listlessly across his pale forehead. He wore the same T-shirt and jeans he had had on when she had seen him at the memorial Sunday outside the Stroud plant, and the sour smell of his body odor hung in the air around him.
“Why did you give your teacher a fake bomb?” Ana asked.
“Because she was an idiot and I wanted to prove it. She freaked out about a bomb that looked like something out of a cartoon.”
“But you were the one who got into trouble.” Rogers moved from where he had been leaning against the wall to loom over Elgin, his muscular bulk making the young man look even smaller. “You were expelled from school.” The school district had eventually dropped the charges and Leo had been released from jail. It had taken some serious digging to uncover the incident.
Leo jutted out his lower lip like a pouting adolescent. “I hated the place anyway. It was full of idiots.”
“Was Parker Stroud an idiot?” Rogers asked.
Something flickered across Leo’s face—confusion? Fear? “Parker was okay,” he said.
Ana leaned toward him. “Were you and Parker friends?” she asked.
“No, we weren’t friends.”
“But you knew him.”
His nostrils flared as he blew out a breath. “We had, like, thirty people in our whole class. Everybody knew everybody. But it’s not like we hung out or anything.”
“Why didn’t the school press charges against you?” Ana asked.
“Haven’t you been listening? It wasn’t a real bomb.”
“You can be charged for threatening someone, even if your threat isn’t real,” Rogers said. “With all the incidents of school violence, how did you ever think you’d get away with such a stupid stunt?”
Leo flinched at the word “s
tupid,” as if Rogers had slapped him. “People around here knew me. They knew I wasn’t dangerous.”
“Your mother worked for the Strouds,” Ana said. “Maybe the Strouds put in a good word for you. After all, their business is the biggest employer in town. They probably had a lot of influence.”
Leo’s scowl turned ugly. “I didn’t need the Strouds to pull any strings for me.”
“Do you blame the Strouds for your mother’s death?” Rogers asked.
A flash of anger this time. Leo sat up straighter. “They’re responsible. The medication they make killed her. If they had any kind of quality control this wouldn’t have happened.”
“Your mother died.” Rogers’s voice was flat. Cold. “You held the Strouds responsible. So you decided to make them pay.”
A sharp jerk of his head, left to right. “They’ll pay,” he said. “I’ve already talked to a lawyer. She thinks I have a good case.”
“A bomb is quicker,” Rogers said.
Leo’s face twisted. “Look, I wouldn’t do that. I knew Lydia. She was a nice person.” His voice broke. “She and my mom were friends.” He covered his eyes with one hand.
Rogers braced his hands on the table next to Leo. “We’re going to search your mother’s house, your car, and your apartment and office in Nashville,” he said. “If you made that bomb, we’re going to find out.”
“Go ahead and look.” Leo lowered his hand. “You won’t find anything.”
“How long do you plan to stay in Mayville?” Ana asked.
“Why? Are you going to tell me not to leave town?”
“Answer the question,” Rogers said. “How long do you plan to be in town?”
Leo slumped in the chair. “I don’t know. The...the service for my mother is Saturday, but then I need to decide what to do with the house and... I don’t know. I can’t really think of anything right now.”
“When do you have to be back at work at Integrated Security?” Ana asked.
“I took a leave of absence. My boss said I could come back when I’m ready.” His eyes met hers. The anguish in them was like a raw wound. “She was all I had—my mother. It was just her and me, all those years. I don’t know what I’m going to do without her.”
