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Before he Kills
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Daddy? Daddy, it’s me. Wake up.”
Mackenzie stepped into the bedroom and braced herself, turning from the sight of her dead father.
“What happened, Daddy?”
Her sister was in the room, too, standing on the other side of the bed, looking at their father with a disappointed look on her face.
“Steph, what happened?” Mackenzie asked.
“He called out for you and you didn’t come. This is your fault.”
“No!”
Mackenzie stepped forward again and then, knowing it was lunacy to do so, she still crawled onto the bed and snuggled up next to her father. Soon, she knew, his flesh would be cold and pale.
Mackenzie woke with a start, the nightmare jarring her awake at 3:12 AM, matted in sweat. She sat there, breathing hard, and despite herself, she started to cry.
She missed her dad so much that it hurt.
She sat there, alone, crying herself to sleep.
But it would be hours, she knew, before she fell back asleep. If at all.
In a strange way, she yearned to throw herself back into the case. Somehow, that was less painful.
*
When Mackenzie arrived at Carol’s Diner a few hours later, she was awake and alert. Looking across a small diner table at Agent Ellington, the idea of how much her nightmare had affected her, of how easily she had gotten spooked last night, was embarrassing. What in the hell was wrong with her?
She knew what it was. The case was getting to her, stirring up old memories she thought she had laid to rest. It was affecting the way she lived. She’d heard of this happening to others before but had never experienced it herself until now.
She wondered if Ellington had ever experienced it. From her side of the table, he looked well-polished and professional – the spitting image of what Mackenzie expected an FBI agent to be. He was well built but not massive, confident but not cocky. It was hard to imagine him being rattled by much of anything.
He caught her looking and rather than looking away embarrassed, she held his gaze.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing, really,” she said. “I’m just wondering what it’s like to know that with a single phone call, you can get the Bureau looking into something that it would take me several hours to convince the local PD to look into.”
“It’s not always that smooth,” Ellington said.
“Well, with this case, the Bureau seems motivated,” Mackenzie pointed out.
“The ritualistic set-up of the murder scenes practically screams serial killer,” he said. “And now, with another body discovered, it seems that’s exactly what we have.”
“And has Nelson been accommodating?” she asked.
Ellington smiled and it showed signs of a subtle charm lurking under his finely composed exterior. “He’s trying to be. Sometimes the small-town mentality is hard to break out of.”
“Don’t I know it,” Mackenzie said.
The waitress came by to take their orders. Mackenzie opted for a veggie omelet while Ellington ordered a huge breakfast platter. With that distraction over, Ellington clasped his hands together and leaned forward.
“So,” he said. “Where do we stand on this?”
Mackenzie knew he was giving her a chance to show him how she worked. It was in his tone and the slight smile that barely touched the edges of his mouth. He was ruggedly handsome and Mackenzie was slightly uncomfortable with how often her eyes were drawn to his mouth.
“We have to wait on the leads for now and really study them,” she said. “The last time we had what we thought was a promising lead, we were dead wrong.”
“But you busted a guy that was selling kiddie porn,” Ellington pointed out. “So it wasn’t a total waste.”
“That’s true. But still, I’m going to assume you’ve noticed the hierarchy of our local PD. If I don’t figure this out soon, I’ll be stuck in my position for a very long time.”
“I’m not so sure about that. Nelson thinks highly of you. Whether or not he’d admit it to the other guys, well, that’s a different story. That’s why he has me helping you. He knows you can get this done.”
She looked away from him for the first time. She wasn’t sure how she’d get this case wrapped up if she didn’t stop jumping at every little sound in her house and sleeping with her gun on the nightstand.
“I figure we start with the wood sample,” she said. “We visit whoever is the local supplier of that sort of wood, right down to how it’s sawed. If that doesn’t produce anything, we’re going to have to really start grilling the women that Hailey Lizbrook worked with. We may even have to get as desperate as to look through security cameras from the club she worked at.”
“All good ideas,” he said. “Another idea I’m going to pitch to Nelson is to have undercover officers on site at some of the strip clubs within a one-hundred-mile radius. We can pull some agents from the Omaha office if we need to. Looking back through old cases – which, I must say, you nailed right on the head during an earlier meeting according to Nelson – we may also be on the lookout for a man that’s pursuing prostitutes as well. We can’t just assume it’s strippers.”
Mackenzie nodded, even though she was beginning to doubt that the case she had recalled from the ’80s where a prostitute had been strung from a line pole was related to this case. Still, it was nice to have her efforts acknowledged by someone with experience.
“Okay,” Ellington said. “So I have to ask.”
“Ask what?”
“It’s clear that you’re undermined at the local level. But it’s also clear that you bust your ass and know your stuff. Even Nelson has told me that you’re one of his most promising detectives. I had a look at your records, you know. Everything I saw was impressive. So why stay here where you’re sneered at and not given a fair chance when you could easily be working as a detective anywhere else?”
Mackenzie shrugged. It was something she had asked herself multiple times and the answer, while morbid, was simple. She sighed, not wanting to get into it but, at the same time, did not want to pass up the opportunity. She’d spoken about her reasons for staying local with Zack a few times – back when they had still been communicating – and Nelson knew some of her history as well. But she could not remember the last time someone had willingly invited her to speak about it.
“I grew up just outside of Omaha,” she said. “My childhood was…not the best. When I was seven years old, my father was killed. I was the one that discovered the body, right there in his bedroom.”
Ellington frowned, his face filled with compassion.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly.
She sighed.
“He was a private investigator,” she added. “He’d been a beat cop for about five years before that, though.”
He sighed, too.
“It’s my theory that at least one out of every five cops has some sort of unresolved trauma from their past that is related to a crime,” he said. “It’s that trauma that made them want to protect and serve.”
“Yeah,” Mackenzie said, not sure how to respond to the fact that Ellington had just sized her up in less than twenty seconds. “That sounds about right.”
“Was your father’s killer ever found?” Ellington asked.
“No. Based on the case files I’ve read and the little bit my mother has told me about what happened, he had been investigating a small group that dealt in smuggling drugs in from Mexico when he was killed. The case was pursued for a while but was dropped within three months. And that was that.”
“Sorry to hear it,” Ellington said.
“After that, when I realized that there was a lot of lazy, sloppy work in the justice system, I wanted to do something in law enforcement, to be a detective, to be exact.”
“So you achieved your dream by the age of twenty-five,” Ellington said. “That’s impressive.”
Before she could say anything else, the waitress came by with her food. She set the plates out and as Mackenzie started to dig in on her omelet, she was surprised to see Ellington close his eyes and say a silent grace over his food.
She couldn’t help but stare for a moment as his eyes were closed. She had not thought of him as a religious man and something about seeing him pray over his food touched her. She stole a glance at his left hand and saw no wedding ring. She wondered what his life was like. Did he have a bachelor pad with beer stocked in the fridge, or was he more of the type to have a wine rack and IKEA bookshelves lined with classic and modern literature?
She was working with an open book here. More interesting was how he had become an FBI agent. She wondered what he was like in an interrogation room, or in the heat of the moment when guns were drawn and a suspect was within a hair of either surrendering or opening fire. She knew none of these things about Ellington – and that was exciting.
When he opened his eyes and started eating, Mackenzie looked away, back to her food. After a moment, she couldn’t help herself.
“Okay, so how about you?” she asked. “What led you to a career with the FBI?”
“I was a child of the eighties,” Ellington said. “I wanted to be John McClane and Dirty Harry, only with more refinement.”
Mackenzie smiled. “Those are pretty good role models. Dangerous, but risky.”
He was about to say something else when his cell phone rang.
“Excuse me,” he said, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out the phone.
Mackenzie listened in to his side of the conversation, which turned out to be short. After a few affirmative responses and a quick Thanks, he killed the call and looked forlornly at his food.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “We’re going to need to box this up, though. The results from the wood sample came in.”
He looked right at her.
“The lumber yard it originated from is less than half an hour away.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mackenzie had always loved the smell of freshly cut wood. It went back to Christmas holidays spent with her grandparents after her father had died. Her grandfather had heated his house with an old wood stove and the back end of the house had always smelled of cedar and the not entirely unpleasant smell of fresh ash.
She was reminded of that old wood stove as she stepped out of the car and into the gravel lot of Palmer’s Lumber Yard. To her left, a saw mill was set up, running a huge tree down a belt and toward a saw that was roughly the size of the car she had just stepped out of. Beyond that, several piles of freshly downed lumber waited its turn for the saw.
She took a moment to watch the process. A loader that looked to be a mix of a small crane and a toy-grabbing machine lifted the logs and deposited them onto an archaic-looking machine that pushed them into a belt. From there, the logs were led directly to a saw which she assumed was adjusted for each log by a mechanism or control panel that she could not see from where she sat. As she turned away from this, she saw a truck going out of the lumber yard’s exit with a trailer of crudely cut timber stacked about twelve feet high.
Oddly enough, she thought of Zack as she watched it all. He had applied to work at a place like this on the other end of town right around the time he’d landed the job at the textile mill; when he’d discovered the rotating shifts available at the mill, he’d taken it, hoping for more time off. She thought he might have been good working with lumber; he’d always had a knack for building things.
“Looks like hard work,” Ellington said.
“Ours is pretty rough, too,” she said, happy to have the thoughts of Zack out of her head.
“That it is,” Ellington agreed.
In front of them, a basic concrete building was identified only by black stenciled letters over the front door reading OFFICE. She walked alongside Ellington to the front door and was once again taken aback when Ellington opened the door for her. She didn’t think she’d ever been shown such a display of chivalry or respect from anyone on the force since the first day she’d carried a badge.
Inside, the noise from outside was muffled to a dull roar. The office consisted of a large counter with rows of filing cabinets behind it. The smell of cut wood permeated the place and there seemed to be dust everywhere. A single man stood behind the counter, writing something in a ledger as they entered. When he regarded them, it was clear that he was a bit confused – probably by Ellington’s suit and Mackenzie’s business-casual attire.
“Hey there,” the man behind the counter said. “Can I help you?”
Ellington took the lead, which Mackenzie was fine with. He’d shown her the utmost respect and had more experience than she did. It made her wonder where Porter was. Had Nelson kept him back at the office to go over the photos? Or was he on interview detail, maybe speaking with Hailey Lizbrook’s co-workers?
“I’m Agent Ellington, and this is Detective White,” Ellington said. “We’d like to speak with you for a moment about a case we’re trying to wrap up.”
“Um, sure,” the man said, clearly still confused. “Are you sure you have the right place?”
“Yes, sir,” Ellington said. “While we can’t reveal the full details of the case, what I can tell you is that a pole has been found at each of the scenes. We took a sample from the wood and our forensics team led us here.”
“Poles?” the man asked, looking surprised. “Are you talking about the Scarecrow Killer?”
Mackenzie frowned, not liking the fact that this case was already becoming a staple of public conversation. If a lonely man in a lumber yard office had heard about it, the chances were good that news of the case was spreading like wildfire. And among it all, her face was plastered to newspapers featuring the story.
Indeed, he looked her over, and she thought she could see recognition in his face.
“Yes,” Ellington said. “Have you had anyone out of the ordinary come by to purchase these poles?”
“I’d be happy to help you,” the man behind the counter said. “But I’m afraid it’s going to be something of a rabbit trail for you. See, I only receive and sell lumber from companies or smaller wood yards. Anything that leaves here is usually going to another lumber yard or to a company of some sort.”
“What sort of companies?” Mackenzie asked.
“It depends on what kind of wood we’re talking about,” he said. “The majority of my wood goes to construction companies. But I also have a few clients that are into wood crafting for things like furniture.”
“How many clients run through here in the course of a month?” Ellington asked.
“Seventy or so on a good month,” he said. “But the last few months have been pretty slow. So it might be easier to find what you’re looking for.”
“One more thing,” Mackenzie said. “Do you place any sort of markings on lumber that goes out of here?”
“For larger orders, I’ll sometimes place a stamp on one piece per load.”
“A stamp?”
“Yeah. It’s done by a small press I have outside. It puts the date and the name of my lumber yard on the piece.”
“But nothing engraved or carved?”
“No, nothing like that,” the man said.
“Would you be able to pull up the records on which clients have brought pre-cut cedar poles?” Ellington asked.
“Yes, I can do that. Do you know what size?”
“One moment,” Ellington said, reaching for his phone, presumably to pull up the information.
“Nine feet,” Mackenzie said, pulling the figure from memory.
Ellington looked over to her and gave her a smile.
“One foot underground,” Mackenzie said, “and eight feet above the surface.”
“The poles were also rather old,” Ellington said. “The wood was not fresh. Our tests indicate it had never seen any sort of treatment, either.”
“That makes it a little easier,” the man said. “If it came from here, older wood would have come out of my scrap stock. Give me a few minutes and I can get you that information. How far back do you need to go?”
“Let’s go three months, just to be safe,” Ellington said.
The man nodded and went to one of the ancient-looking filing cabinets sitting behind him. As they waited, Mackenzie’s cell phone started to ring. When she answered it, she was deathly afraid that it might be Zack calling to request some sort of reconciliation. She was relieved to find that it was Porter.
“Hello?” she said, answering the call.
“Mackenzie, where are you right now?” Porter asked.
“I’m with Ellington at Palmer’s Lumber Yard checking on the test results from the chip we took from the pole.”
“Any results?”
“It looks like another lead to several other leads.”
“Well shit,” Porter said. “I hate to tell you, but it doesn’t get any better.” He hesitated for a minute and she heard a shaky sigh on the other end before he added:
“We’ve got another body.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When they arrived at the new crime scene forty minutes later, Mackenzie was more than a little uneasy that this one was closer to home. The scene was exactly thirty-five minutes from her house, in the backyard of a ramshackle house that had been abandoned long ago. She could practically feel the shadow of this newly murdered woman stretching across the flat land, across the city streets, and falling across her front door.
She did her best to hide her frazzled nerves as she and Ellington walked toward the pole. She looked toward the old house, particularly into its empty window frames. To her, they looked like huge looming eyes, peering out and mocking her.
There was a small crowd of officers around the pole, Porter standing in the center of them. He regarded Mackenzie and Ellington as they approached the pole, but Mackenzie barely noticed. She was too busy taking in the sight of the body, noticing two very distinct differences about this victim right away.
First, this woman had small breasts, whereas the previous two victims had been well-endowed. Second, the lashes that had previously been on the other victims’ backs could also be seen on this woman’s stomach and chest.
“This is getting out of hand,” Porter said, his voice soft and haggard.
“Who discovered the body?” Mackenzie asked.
“The land owner. He lives two miles to the east. He had a chain up on the private dirt road and he just happened to notice it was cut. He says no one comes down here, except an occasional hunter during deer season, but as you know, deer season is several months away. And besides, he says he knows all the men that hunt here.”
“Is it a private road?” Mackenzie asked, looking back to the dirt road they had just taken to get here.
“Yes. So whoever did this,” he said, nodding at the hung body, “cut the chain down. He knew where he was going to come to show off his next trophy. He preplanned this.”
Mackenzie nodded. “That shows willful intent and purpose rather than just some unhinged psychological need.”
“Is there any chance the land owner is involved?” Ellington asked.
“I’ve got two men questioning him at his home right now,” Nelson said. “But I doubt it. He’s seventy-eight years old and limps when he walks. I can’t see him hailing poles around or successfully luring strippers into his truck.”
Mackenzie stepped closer to the body, Ellington following suit. This woman looked considerably younger than the others – maybe in her early twenties. Her head hung low, looking to the ground, but Mackenzie made note of the dark red lipstick, smeared around her cheek and chin. Her dark mascara had also run, leaving dark streaks down her face.
Mackenzie started around to the back of the pole. The lashes were the same as the other two. Some were still fresh enough to offer a wet edge, the blood not quite dry yet. She hunkered down to the bottom of the pole but was stopped by Nelson.
“I already checked,” he said. “Your numbers are there.”
Ellington joined her and hunkered down for a look. He looked up at Mackenzie. “No clue what these numbers represent?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“I think this goes without saying,” Nelson said, “but this case is now going to take top priority over everything. Agent Ellington, how soon can we get some more bodies on this?”
“I can make a call and probably have a few more out here by this afternoon.”
“Do it, please. Any results from the lumber yard?”
“We got sixteen names,” Mackenzie said. “Most of them are construction companies. We have to check each one and see if they can offer any useful information.”
“I’ll get some men on it,” he said. “For right now, I need you and Ellington chasing down the more promising leads. You two are the point men on this thing, so do whatever the hell you need to do to get it wrapped up. I want this sick fucker sitting in an interrogation room by the end of the day.
“Meanwhile, I’m going to have my men go over maps of the surrounding hundred miles or so. We’ll split it up and start staking out isolated areas like this one, the field from the last murder, and cornfields that are easily accessed.”
“Anything else?” Ellington asked.
“Nothing I can think of. Just keep me posted on even the smallest detail you might come across. I’ll talk with you more about that in a second,” Nelson said. He then looked over to Mackenzie and gave her a nod of the head, toward the right. “White, can I talk to you for a second?”
Mackenzie stepped away from the post and followed Nelson off to the side of the dilapidated house, wondering what this was about.
“Are you comfortable working with Ellington?” he asked.
“Yes sir. He’s been on point and incredibly helpful in terms of talking things out.”
“Good. Look, I’m not an idiot. I know your potential and I know that if there’s anyone under my employ that can bring this bastard in, it’s you. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to just let the feds swing in and take it from us. So I want you working with him. I’ve spoken with Porter already and reassigned him. He’s still on the case, but I’ve got him helping with the door-to-door stuff.”
“And he was okay with that?”
“That’s not for you to worry about. For now, you just stick to this case and go with your gut. I’m trusting you to make the right decisions; you don’t need to check in with me on every little thing. Just do what you need to do to end this. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I thought so,” Nelson said with a little smile. “Now you and Ellington get the hell out of here and bring us some results.”
He gave her a gentle clap on the back which, all things considered, was nearly the equivalent of Ellington opening the door for her at the lumber yard. It was a huge stretch coming from Nelson and she appreciated it. They walked back to the body together and Mackenzie looked back at the numbers. She felt that there was something there, that the key to cracking this whole thing lay in those damned numbers.
A part of him, she sensed, wanted to get caught. He was baiting them.
“You okay?” Ellington asked, standing on the other side of the pole.
She nodded, getting to her feet.
“Have you ever been on a case like this before?”
“Just two,” he said. “One of them resulted in eight murders before we caught him.”
“Do you think that’ll happen here?” she asked.
She hated that the questions made her sound uncertain and maybe even inexperienced, but she had to know. All she had to do was remember how frightened she had been for several minutes in her own home, spooked at what had likely been an imagined sound of a creaking floorboard, to understand just how much this case was starting to affect her. She’d lost a boyfriend, she was slowly losing her cool, and she’d be damned if she’d lose anything else as a result of it.
“Not if we can help it,” Ellington answered. He sighed. “So tell me, what do you see here that’s new?”
“Well, the fact that the killer chose a road in the middle of nowhere seems odd. The chain across the road didn’t stop him. Not only that, but he knew it would be there. He was prepared to cut it down.”
“Meaning what?”
She knew that he was testing her, but he was doing it in a way that was not insulting her intelligence. He was challenging her, and she was thoroughly enjoying it.
“Meaning that the areas he’s choosing aren’t just random. He has chosen them for a reason.”
“So not just the murders are predetermined, but the locations as well.”
“Seems like it. I think I – ” she said, but then stopped.
To the right, at the edge of the thin forest, she saw movement.
For a moment, she thought she’d imagined it.
But then she saw it again.
Something was moving, heading deeper into the woods. She could make out just enough of the shape to see that it was a human figure.
“Hey!”
It was all she could think to say and it came out a bit excited. At the sound of her voice, the shape took off even faster, any attempt at stealth now gone as they snapped branches and rustled foliage while they escaped.
Acting on instinct, Mackenzie took off toward the woods at a sprint. By the time Ellington had caught on and followed behind her, Mackenzie was already out of the yard and in the woods. The trees around her seemed just as forgotten and colorless as the house that sat behind her, its black windows still gazing out at her.
She slapped branches away as she ran through the woods. She could just make out the sound of Ellington following behind her but she didn’t waste her time or effort looking back.
“Stop!” she demanded.
She wasn’t surprised when the figure continued to run. Mackenzie had estimated within a matter of seconds that she was faster than her objective, closing in with a quickness that she had always prided herself on. She caught a few branches to the face and felt cobwebs clinging to her skin but she blasted through the forest, undaunted.
As she closed in on the figure, she saw that it was a man dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt and a pair of dark jeans. Because he did not fully look back a single time, Mackenzie couldn’t tell how old he was, but she could tell that he was slightly overweight and apparently a little out of shape. She could hear him wheezing as she closed in on his heels.
“Dammit,” she said as she reached him, stretching out her arm and grabbing him by the shoulder. “I said stop!”
With that, she gave him a hard push which sent him down to the ground. He rolled once before skidding to a stop.
I got him, Mackenzie thought.
The man tried to get to his feet but Mackenzie delivered a swift kick to the back of his knee that sent him down again. He banged his face on a tree root as he fell.
Mackenzie planted a hard knee into the man’s back and reached for her weapon. Ellington finally arrived and he also pinned the man to the ground. Now that Ellington’s full weight was on him, he’d stopped wriggling. Mackenzie reached to her belt and retrieved her handcuffs, while Ellington pulled the man’s arms behind his back to yet another cry of pain. Mackenzie slapped the cuffs on and then pulled the man roughly to his feet.
“What’s your name?” Mackenzie asked.
She stepped in front of him and saw him for the first time. The guy looked harmless, overweight and probably in his late thirties.
“Aren’t you supposed to ask me things like that before you assault me?”
Ellington shook him a bit and applied some pressure to his shoulder. “She asked you a question.”
“Ellis Pope,” the man said, visibly shaken.
“And why are you here?”
He said nothing at first and in the silence, Mackenzie heard more commotion in the woods. This noise came from her right and when she turned in that direction, she saw Nelson and three other officers come scrambling through the thin trees and foliage.
“What the hell is going on?” Nelson shouted. “I saw you two take off in my rearview and – ”
He stopped when he saw the third person with them, his hands cuffed behind his back.
“He says his name is Ellis Pope,” Mackenzie said. “He was hanging out at the edge of the forest, watching us. When I called out to him, he went running.”
Nelson got in Pope’s face and it was clear that Nelson was struggling not to physically assault him. “What were you doing here, Mr. Pope?” Nelson asked. “Did you stay close by to admire your handiwork?”
“No,” Pope said, now more frightened than ever.
“Then why were you here?” Nelson asked. “It’s the only time I’ll ask you before I start to lose my cool.”
“I’m a reporter,” he said.
“For which paper?” Mackenzie asked.
“No paper. A website. The Oblong Journal.”
Mackenzie, Nelson, and Ellington shared an uncomfortable glance before Mackenzie slowly reached into her pocket for her phone. She pulled up her browser, searched for The Oblong Journal, and opened up the page. She quickly navigated to the Staff page and not only did she find the name Ellis Pope, but the picture in the bio was clearly the same man that stood before him.
It was rare that Mackenzie cursed, but she handed her phone to Nelson and let out a strained, “Fuck.”
“Now,” Ellis Pope said, realizing that he was slowly gaining control of the situation. “Which one of you pigs do I have to talk to about pressing charges?”
