Tell Me Where She’s Buried (A Striker and Frost FBI Thriller #1)

Prologue

The house stunk. Even standing outside the front door, his shoulder pressed against the cracked brick and his gun drawn, FBI Agent Constantine Striker could smell the reek of death emanating from inside.

But unlike his partner who stood on the other side of the entrance, the smell didn’t bother Con.

Instead, it comforted him.

After nearly a year of hunting the man the media had dubbed The Sandman, they finally had him trapped.

It wasn’t supposed to take this long. They’d been hot on his trail earlier, six months after the man’s second murder.

But Con had lost him.

And because of this, it had cost at least another eleven young women their lives.

Upwards of thirteen, if you counted Wendy Schneider, who had gone missing three days ago, and his sister.

Despite the thousands of hours the FBI, local PD, state police, and the California Bureau of Investigation had put in, the only reason they were even this close was because of an anonymous tip.

A tip that led them here, to a small, abandoned house on the outskirts of Orange County.

Con turned his head to look at his partner, FBI Agent Tate Abernathy. Unlike him, Tate was clearly having an issue with the smell. The man was grimacing, and every few seconds, his Adam’s apple bobbed.

He was trying to keep his lunch down.

Noticing his stare, Tate pulled the neck of the FBI T-shirt he wore up to cover his clean-shaven face.

Then he met Con’s gaze.

A simple nod was all it took.

They were ready.

They were ready to finally end this.

With his free hand, Con reached out and tried the door.

He expected to find it locked but not only did it open freely, just a gentle push was enough to cause it to swing inward.

It creaked loudly and Con, worried that the sound would alert The Sandman, threw caution out the window and rushed inside, leading with his pistol.

The foul smell was even worse in the foyer—the air was thick with the reek of human decay.

The Sandman was here all right.

Con knew this just like he knew that his sister was dead.

But there were others in the house, too.

Flies, thick as blueberries, were everywhere. Buzzing, cavorting, performing their little death dances in the air.

Tate put two fingers to his eyes and then aimed down the narrow hallway in front of them, toward what Con suspected had once been the kitchen.

Their plan was to clear the ground floor first before heading upstairs.

But plans changed.

The concentration of flies seemed to increase the closer they got to the lopsided staircase.

Con shook his head, and he pointed toward the stairs instead.

Even though only his eyes were visible, Con knew that Tate was scowling in disapproval. His partner repeated the two fingered gesture more fervently, urging them forward instead of upward.

Con ignored the man.

Despite being two years younger than Tate, he was the senior officer, the one in charge of this case.

And it was his sister who had gone missing.

Con started up the stairs, careful to avoid the larger holes in the wooden treads.

Tate cursed under his breath and followed, walking backward, training his gun the way they’d come.

They followed the trail of flies to the landing. Here, the filthy walls were covered in graffiti. Con’s first thought that the massive black letters were random, the musings of a manic madman.

D, R, A, S …

But there was a pattern to them.

They were names, written in various sized letters, some stretching from floor to ceiling, others only an inch tall. They were difficult to understand, but once you recognized the pattern, it was impossible not to read them in your head.

Debora , spelled incorrectly, missing the H .

Tanya, Ashley, Brittany.

Marcy.

They were all there.

Tate urged him onward, but Con stopped and focused on these names.

Valerie… where’s Valerie?

He counted twelve names, all twelve of The Sandman’s victims.

This did not bode well for Wendy—her name was written in what looked like fresher paint, the letters slightly glossier than the others.

But there was no Valerie.

Where the fuck is Valerie?

Con started to move again, slowly now, passing open doorways to bedrooms full of garbage and refuse.

Filthy mattresses, soiled sheets balled in the corners. Used syringes lying on the scuffed parquet floors.

Piss stains.

Shit smears.

The flies were so thick now that the two FBI Agents were forced to wave a hand in front of their faces just to see ahead of them.

At the end of the hall was a door, the only one they’d come across that was closed.

Con stopped just in front of the laminate door, which barely fit in the frame, and Tate moved off to one side. The shirt had fallen from his partner’s face, and he saw the man breathing through his mouth to try to mitigate the stench.

Con’s first instinct was to try the knob, as he’d done outside, but he changed his mind. While it was difficult to hear over the incessant buzzing of the flies, it didn’t appear as if The Sandman had been roused by their movements inside the house.

If they still had the element of surprise on their side, Con planned to exploit it to their advantage. Instead of opening the door, he reared back and drove his foot into the space just beside the knob.

The hinges tore from the rotten frame and the noise that the door made as it fell inward was shockingly loud.

Con rushed into the room, following the path that the door had cut into the veritable wall of flies within.

And that’s when he saw him: Matthew Nelson Neil, more commonly known as The Sandman.

He was lying naked on a mattress in the center of the room.

“Don’t move,” Tate shouted. His voice was tight and strained. “Don’t you fucking move!”

Con didn’t wait for the man to wake—he just ran.

The Sandman’s wide, coal-black eyes opened just as Con leaped.

“Wha—”

Con stole the man’s words as his forearm came down on The Sandman’s face.

The man’s nose crunched, and he grunted in a mixture of pain and surprise. The shock didn’t last long, however.

Matthew bucked, trying to use his size advantage—he was six foot six, close to three hundred pounds—to flip Con off of him.

But Con was like a feral cat. He punched The Sandman twice—once in the stomach and once in his injured face—and then reared back, putting both hands on his gun as he pointed it between the man’s eyes.

“Where is she?” Con screamed in a voice he didn’t recognize. “Where the fuck is she?”

Matthew was dazed. His nose was smashed, almost snout-like in appearance, and blood coated his lips and chin.

“Where the fuck is she!”

When Matthew still didn’t answer, Con shoved the gun forward. He’d been aiming for the man’s forehead, but at the last second, Matthew raised his chin, and the gun found his mouth.

The hard metal barrel clicked on The Sandman’s teeth. He gagged as Con pushed the gun deeper into his mouth and hit the back of the man’s throat.

“Where is Valerie?” Con shouted again.

A hand came down on his shoulder.

“Con, look.”

He was so incensed, so lost in his fury, that if it hadn’t been for his partner’s strangled tone, he would have ignored him completely.

Keeping the gun jammed halfway down The Sandman’s throat, he glanced at Tate.

His partner was indicating the area beside the Sandman with his own pistol.

Con inhaled sharply.

There was a woman lying on the mattress next to The Sandman.

Like Matthew, the woman was also nude. She was on her side, curled away from them.

Her skin was the color of cigarette ash.

There was no question that the woman was dead. Like all the others, The Sandman had stripped and strangled her.

Con instantly drew back, pulling his gun from the man’s mouth. It was covered in thick strings of saliva.

“No,” Con said softly. “No—tell me it’s not her.”

He was distraught, and his finger tensed on the trigger.

He wanted nothing more than to put a bullet in The Sandman’s now smiling face.

Tate retched but gained enough control of his faculties to bend down, swat flies, and get a better look at The Sandman’s final victim.

“Please tell me it’s not her,” Con whispered.

Tate turned his head to the side and vomited.

“Tate! Tell me it’s not her! Tell me it’s not Valerie!”

Con’s partner lifted his chin, opened his mouth, and puked again.

“ Tate! ”

Tate wiped his face with the back of his arm.

“It’s not her, Con. It’s… it’s Wendy. It’s not Val.”

Rather than calm him, this revelation only served to infuriate Con.

He dropped his gun and wrapped his hands around The Sandman’s thick throat.

The man continued to smile, revealing chipped teeth from where Con’s pistol had been driven into his mouth.

“Tell me where she is!” Con screamed, spit speckling The Sandman’s shattered face. “ Tell me where she’s buried! ”

Matthew Nelson Neil began to laugh.