If She Saw

by Blake Pierce

  “That hurts, but it’s fair.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. Michelle and I would love to come over and visit—a lot. I want her to know you. I really do. I keep telling her you had to bail because even in retirement, you’re being a badass.”

  “That’s a rosy way to paint it, I suppose.”

  “Don’t sweat it, Mom. Look, how about Michelle and I come over on Saturday. We’ll do lunch and I’ll let you change some of these disgusting diapers.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Kate said. With the conversation coming to a close, the weight of it was indeed starting to sting.

  She doesn’t see me as reliable enough to keep my own granddaughter, she thought. And the hell of it is that she has a good point.

  She stared out to the street, watching the pedestrian traffic and thinking about their individual lives. They’d all go home at some point today and either lift up or tear down their friends and family members. They would go home to feel loved or feel as if they weren’t quite good enough.

  That’s every life, she thought. The idea of being happy is probably different for each one of them. For some it rests in work; in others, friends, family, or lovers. In others, some unnamable thing.

  It was a thought that made her realize that if she was ever going to balance her life in a way that allowed her to keep her feet in the pools of the FBI while still being a reliable mother and grandmother, she was going to have to finally scrutinize that part of her own life. What was it that made her truly happy? And if it was more than one thing, what did she need to do to bring those two worlds together?

  With this heavy thought on her mind, her cell phone buzzed at her. She checked it and saw that it was a text from Allen.

  Are you back in town? Want to do dinner again? All the stuff that happened after dinner last time not expected.

  Kate couldn’t suppress the giggle that came out of her in response to the little smiley face and the innuendo of how their last date had ended. She thought for a moment, smiled, and then sent a response.

  I am home. But tired…got in late and need to catch up on sleep. How about dinner tomorrow? The only stipulation being that all the stuff that happened after dinner last night is also included.

  It felt good to be back in the dating saddle, she had to admit. It had been a very long time since she had spoken to a man in such a way. It made her feel about twenty years younger.

  Allen responded right away. Jeez, twist my arm why don’t you? Sounds good. See you at 6?

  She quickly returned a text to confirm the time and then headed back inside. She looked around the empty house and felt a little surge of warmth. She had a date lined up for tomorrow, lunch with Michelle and Melissa next week, and she had just come back from presumably wrapping a gruesome murder case. Life was looking pretty sweet.

  Then why does something feel off?

  It was a good question. And the reason it unsettled her so much was because in asking herself the question, Chester Black kept coming to mind.

  What if it’s not him?

  And it was that question that had her sitting in her armchair, staring at the walls. She sat there for a very long time and with each second that passed, she started to wonder if she and DeMarco had left Roanoke too soon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  Even though she’d told Allen their date would have to wait until tomorrow because she was so tired, Kate ended up making full use of her afternoon. As three o’clock rolled around, she walked several blocks down the street for Chinese takeout. Then, over orange chicken and cheese wontons, she pulled the case files up on her computer and took out the few printed materials she had collected while in Roanoke. She made herself a little workstation at the kitchen table and went to work, trying to alleviate the nasty feeling that Chester Black was not their man and the case was still wide open.

  The thing that was really hanging her up was the blanket. And that made no sense to her. It was clear that it had meaning to the killer. It took a lot of extra effort to cram it into the throats of his victims and it was clear that he was doing it on purpose.

  But the question remained: Why?

  She thought of Chester Black again. She thought of the personality he projected and the things they had seen and experienced in his trailer. Kate was far from a psychologist but she didn’t seen any outright signs from him of someone who might still be clutching to some long-lost memories of his childhood that involved a blanket.

  She recalled what Danielle Ethridge had said, about how the blanket had once likely been a comfort object. And as far as Kate was concerned, Chester Black did not seem like the type to obsess over a comfort object.

  The crimes Chester Black had committed, while absolutely deplorable and poorly thought out, were of what he felt was necessity—crimes that were tied into his abnormal religious beliefs. That in no way made him a killer.

  But they found human blood on that towel. What about that?

  That was the one roadblock in keeping Kate from thinking Chester Black was innocent. If she could get around that, she would have to face the fact that she was pretty sure she and DeMarco had left for home, leaving the wrong man in a holding cell in Roanoke.

  If the blanket was a comfort object…what does that say about the killer when he was a kid?

  She dwelled on this for a moment, sensing there was something worth digging into. If the killer held onto a security blanket as a child, it likely meant that he’d been insecure. Maybe even quiet. Again, she was not a psychologist, but she had been involved with enough cases to make extremely educated guesses—which usually turned out to be right.

  Yet they had spent their time looking for someone who was violent by nature. They had been looking for a child who had dealt with issues from a young age. But what if their killer had never truly seemed violent until just recently? What if their killer had been a quiet and mostly harmless kid, dragging a blanket around behind him?

  She’d been digging through the files for any evidence of this for a little over an hour when her cell phone rang. She saw that it was DeMarco and answered it right away.

  “All wrapped up?” Kate asked.

  “On this end, yes. But I got a call during the meeting. It was Palmetto, from Roanoke.”

  “The human blood on the towel…”

  “That really has been bothering you, huh?” DeMarco said.

  “It has. Anyway…what were the results?”

  “The blood was from a woman named Abby Warren. Roanoke PD ran a search and found her alive and well. She happens to be Chester Black’s girlfriend. And she admitted to the two of them engaging in some consensual blood-letting during sex.”

  “Cutting one another?”

  “Yeah. She has the scars to prove it. Chester figured he’d be charged for something because he was the one doing the cutting, so he never said anything. But it all checks out. And based on all of this…”

  “He’s free to go.”

  “Well, he’s looking at some animal cruelty charges, but it’s not looking like he’s our killer.”

  “So what now?”

  “What now is you rest up. I’ll pick you up around nine in the morning tomorrow and we’re heading back to Roanoke.”

  “We have to start with Dr. Ethridge,” Kate said. “I think we’ve been looking for the wrong kind of killer.” She then told DeMarco about her breakthrough concerning a quiet kid that, for some reason or another, had become violent more recently rather than always having an appetite for it.

  “Sounds like a plan,” DeMarco said. “Just…well, this isn’t going to mess up any babysitting plans again, is it?”

  “No. Just a date.” She frowned when she thought about having to cancel on Allen again. At least this time she’d have the awareness to inform him beforehand.

  “You okay heading back out there?” DeMarco asked.

  Kate appreciated the respect and courtesy but once again felt that she was being handed certain privileges. She knew that if she elected not to return
to Roanoke to put a bow on this case, Duran would likely not come down too hard on her. But she wanted to go out there, to help DeMarco find the killer before he could strike again.

  “Absolutely,” she said. “I’ll have coffee waiting when you pick me up.”

  They ended the call and rather than call it a day, Kate went directly back to her case files. Maybe there was something they had missed. Maybe if she now looked at it through the lens of looking for a killer who had been quiet and introverted as a child, something new would present itself.

  She wanted to be in the know, the details of the case like the lyrics to a well-worn song in her head. Because if she had her way, they were going to catch the bastard this time.

  Maybe even quickly enough so that she could keep her date with Allen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  True to her word, Kate had coffee waiting the next morning. She knew that DeMarco took it black, so she went ahead and poured some into an insulated cup. DeMarco arrived twenty minutes late but Kate was fine with that. She realized the ungodly hour DeMarco had to leave DC in order to arrive at her house so early, so she was willing to overlook the tardiness. Not that she had any authority to give her grief over it anyway.

  DeMarco seemed troubled almost right away. Kate volunteered to drive, allowing DeMarco to wrestle with her thoughts. But after a while, it was just too much to bear. They were comfortable enough with one another now where silence among them was perfectly okay, but this one was thick and filled with anxiousness.

  “What’s on your mind?” Kate asked.

  “Chester Black. I was so sure it was him.”

  “It was a safe assumption,” Kate said. “And you know what? I felt unsure about him from the start. I should have said something.”

  “Yeah, but even if you had, we’d be right back here…right where we are now. Chasing our tails and not sure where to look. All you would have saved was a night in an interrogation room for Chester Black. And let’s face it—he sort of deserved it.”

  “Is this the first time you’ve been wrong about something on a case?” Kate asked.

  “God no.”

  “And it won’t be the last, either. Don’t let it bother you so much.”

  DeMarco nodded, but still gazed out the window with a brooding look on her face. Kate understood it. She, too, was beating herself up by not fully investing in the bit of hesitation she had felt when they left Roanoke. But she had also experienced this enough in her career to know that it was useless to ponder on it and keep looking back. If they obsessed over things that happened in the past, that gave the killer an edge in the present.

  And this killer already seemed to have more than enough of an edge.

  ***

  Dr. Ethridge appeared a little rushed when Kate and DeMarco showed up at her office at 1:40. She had been expecting them, as DeMarco had called on their way down to Roanoke to keep her abreast of what was happening. But there was a sense of urgency to the doctor now, as if she too could feel the absolute intensity and importance of the situation.

  “I’ve blocked off the next two hours in my schedule to help any way I can,” Ethridge said. “I’ve looked through all of my records over the past fifteen years and pulled any file that seemed like it would be a match. Unfortunately, there’s quite a bit.”

  She pointed to a pile of folders on her desk. It sat about a foot and a half tall. It was certainly quite a bit of material to sift through, but not as bad as Kate had been expecting. “That doesn’t look too bad,” she commented.

  “Oh, this is only the physical records,” she said. “This is everything from 2003 back. Everything from 2004 to current day is saved digitally on the server. There’s this physical pile and then about thirty more on the server.”

  “Will you allow us access to the server?” DeMarco asked.

  “Normally, I’d put up a fight. But this situation is getting out of hand.”

  “Thank you,” Kate said. “Agent DeMarco, would you like to take the digital files while I go through the folders?”

  “That works.”

  “Dr. Ethridge, I’d like to have you on hand to answer any questions that might arise.”

  “Of course. Now, these files that I have pulled—as well as the digital ones I have already flagged for you—are based on the profile you gave me. A kid who was very quiet and introverted. The type that might seek comfort from something like a blanket or a stuffed animal.”

  “That’s correct,” Kate said.

  “It’s worth noting that most children that fit that profile are going to be the type who would respond more to a mother-figure rather than a father-figure. Because of that, I pulled files with patients with that characteristic as well.”

  “Incredible work,” DeMarco said. “Now, is there a computer I can work from?”

  “Yes, you can use my personal laptop,” Ethridge said. She went to her desk, opened it up, and logged DeMarco in.

  The next half an hour felt very much like an intense study session to Kate. It reminded her of her earlier days with the bureau when she had often been stuck with painstaking research assignments. Even back then, though, she’d been seen as an excellent profiler. It was one of the reasons it was bothering her so badly that she could not easily pin down the killer in this case. Even as she went through Ethridge’s files and started ruling patients out based on the date of service, she knew full well that the answer may not be here.

  She fished through the folders as DeMarco clicked through the files on Ethridge’s laptop. Most of the files contained at least one Polaroid picture of the patient. Many of them looked into the camera without much of an expression, though some had bright smiles on their faces. She nearly asked Ethridge why she kept these pictures but remembered somewhere along the way in her profiler training that psychologists often used this technique to show their patients how an expression could speak volumes. It was a great conversation starter. Why do you feel this way today? The little boy in this picture doesn’t look very happy, does he?

  Kate also noticed that in a few of the thicker folders, Ethridge had kept drawings that the children had made. Some were quite pretty in a childlike way—perfectly square houses with triangular roofs with big fluffy clouds and bright suns in the skies. But there were some that were clear cries for help: stick-figure kids with frowning faces, crimson pools around little feet, hard red and black lines everywhere.

  “Do you have every child draw something for you?” Kate asked.

  “Most of the time,” Ethridge answered. “It really all depends on the level of trauma they are dealing with. Simple little drawings are a great way for me to really get a quick judge of their emotional state. It gives me topics to start from without having to guess.”

  “How often do you get ones like this?” Kate asked. She held up a picture of a little girl in pigtails. Behind her, a little dog had been drawn upside down. Something was on fire behind all of it. The little girl’s mouth was a big black O and tears were coming out of her eyes in big exaggerated drops.

  “About half the time.”

  “Is there any correlation between these types of drawings and the kind of kid we’re looking for in all these files?”

  “Sometimes. The kids that are quiet and reserved tend to draw somber pictures, but nothing violent. Of course, that’s not always the case. While the diagnoses can be the same, there are no two kids that are one hundred percent alike in how they handle their emotions. So one introverted child might draw rain clouds or big storm clouds with lightning while another might draw a man with a knife or a dead animal. There’s no right-down-the-middle with this sort of thing.”

  Kate nodded, putting the drawing back with a little chill creeping down her spine. DeMarco then called Ethridge over to the computer with a question. As the two of them chatted, Kate continued to go through the folders. She saw ruined childhood after ruined childhood and she started to get sentimental. Any one of these kids could be Melissa. No kid was guaranteed a safe childhood.
No child could be promised a healthy and happy life.

  This stark realization came to a grinding halt when Kate opened the next folder in the pile. Like a few others, the child’s Polaroid was up front, paper-clipped to the primary summary file. It was a picture of a boy giving a very thin smile that was clearly being forced. Kate guessed him to be about eight years old. Maybe nine at most.

  She skimmed the file but when she realized it was quite thick, she looked up at Dr. Ethridge. “What can you tell me about this patient?” she asked.

  Ethridge came over and looked at the file. She fingered the Polaroid in a loving sort of way and frowned. “That’s Jeremy Neely. I saw him for about three years.”

  “Was he an orphan?”

  “He was bounced around a few foster homes in his youth, yes. Poor kid…he was seven years old when he watched his father kill his mother. He hit her in the head with a bat right in front of Jeremy. He walked around his dead mother’s body for almost an entire day before anyone knew what had happened.”

  “My God,” Kate said.

  DeMarco had taken interest now as well. She was looking up from her laptop, sensing that something might be taking shape. Kate waved her over to join her, feeling that this was finally the break they had been looking for.

  “Dr. Ethridge, can you get me the list of foster families he stayed with?”

  “I don’t have the complete list. You’d have to contact Social Services to get the entire list.”

  “You have the appropriate clearance to get it, right?”

  “I do,” Ethridge said slowly. She grabbed her cell phone from her desk as understanding started to bloom in her eyes. She turned her back to the agents and placed the call.

  Kate nodded, expecting as much. She then pointed to the picture of Jeremy Neely, making sure DeMarco was seeing the one peculiar thing she had seen.