Chapter Twelve #4
“We can look around, and we can see if something is going on there. Maybe we can get his notebook, or we can backtrack where he was heading after TOD.”
There was that.
“Hopefully, Corbin has more he didn’t relay over the phone.”
Ethan hoped so.
Heading up the stairs, Ethan slipped his hand back in Gene’s, and the man glanced over.
“I love when you are compelled to hold my hand,” Gene admitted. “I get this butterfly feeling in my belly. It’s the best feeling in the world when we can walk like this. I really enjoy it.”
Ethan doubted that.
And he said so.
“Being boned by a sexy bear is the best feeling in the world. Handholding is nice, but there’s better pleasure. I know that for a fact.”
That caught him off guard, and made him laugh. Someone was coming out of his shell.
Clearly.
“You don’t say?”
Oh, he did.
Repeatedly.
In fact, he’d prefer being boned by Gene than boned by this case.
Only, the universe was being spicy this week, and they were in its path.
Gene enjoyed the PDA they shared, and held onto it until they reached the stairwell. Once at the door to the floor the FBI office was on, he had to let go.
“Later, my love,” Gene promised.
Ethan winked at him.
“I sure hope so.”
Oh, he could bet on that.
Once at the floor for the FBI office, they headed to the conference room, and Corbin was already there.
He was there with Will and Greyson.
And bless him, he had coffee.
“Hey,” Gene said, sitting down next to Ethan and across from the three men.
There were files and folders, and they weren’t sure if they came from Corbin or if Greyson was doing some research of his own.
“Here you go,” Corbin said.
He handed them each a coffee, and he was more than happy to be inside. When they’d warned him of danger, he was struggling with anxiety.
He didn’t want to be out there.
Not alone.
With them, that was a different story. Then, toss in that Will could get hurt…
That was a no for him.
He.
Was.
Twitchy.
“We just wrapped up with the ME in the morgue,” Gene admitted. “We have some information. How about we go over it? I’m hoping you have some more too,” he said to Corbin.
The detective didn’t mind, and Greyson was the one they bounced their ideas off of, so they knew he didn’t care if they took over the workspace.
If he didn’t want to be bothered, like back in the office, he would have left the room.
“Okay, so we know that all three deaths are connected, and they seem to be pointing at a Voodoo angle,” Gene admitted.
“We have confirmation from the ME that the symbols were also on the victims he autopsied, and the evil eye popped up on an old case. It had different MO, so it might just be a coincidence. For now, we are three for three.”
Greyson didn’t look happy.
In fact, no one did, and that said it all.
Handling religiously motivated killings ALWAYS blew up in someone’s face.
Look at the mess with David Neives.
“So, we have a religious nut, but this time, they are playing Voodoo games?” Corbin asked.
Gene sighed.
“It looks like it.”
Everyone was silent, and with good reason.
Know who didn’t stay quiet?
Ethan.
Instead, he went there.
“Which is bullshit. I’m calling it now that this is a distraction,” he said, holding up a picture of Jarod Shand’s body, covered in symbols. “It feels off to me, and when it feels off, it is off.”
They all looked over.
That’s when Gene lifted a brow.
Was he hearing what he was hearing?
Could they be this lucky?
“Really? On day one? Did you profile that already? Because normally I have to wait for day two for my profile from you.”
Oh, he was aware.
Only, Ethan could read a room, and the evidence was way too directed—almost scripted.
So, he shared what he was feeling. If there was one thing in his life that he was confident about, it was his profiling.
“I’m going by my gut. It all feels forced,” he said. “I’m not saying we don’t follow the lead, because tucked in it might be more leads, but this doesn’t feel ritualistic to me. This feels like punishment. This feels like anger. This feels like the opposite of a religious clusterfuck.”
Gene let his partner talk.
Ethan was very smart, and when he was on, he was ON.
He took the files from Gene, and opened them to the part where Ben had placed the pictures.
Then, he looked at Corbin.
“Give me the autopsy you have for Jaden Medin,” he said.
Corbin pushed the file toward him.
That’s when he looked at the pictures, and instead of making him change his mind, they made him stick to his gut instinct.
“What do you see?” he asked.
Everyone looked at the pictures, and it was Greyson who saw it first.
“The symbols aren’t randomly placed on their body. The same symbols are on the knees, the chest, and the groin—in the exact same locations.”
Ethan glanced over at Gene.
“How many times have we come across cases like this, and the person perpetrating the crimes is out of their minds?”
Gene laughed.
“All of the time. We’ve yet to have a sane ritualistic killer.”
Ethan pointed.
“And yet they are so in control they nailed the location each time with precision? Like they were reading a list or following a pattern?”
Will wasn’t a detective, or a Fed, but he looked at A LOT of crime scenes.
“It looks scripted,” he said.
Ethan pointed at him.
“BINGO.”
Gene saw what they were talking about.
“So someone is mapping out the bodies like with a script?” he asked.
Ethan tapped the photos.
“It’s early, but I’m going to say this is someone who is doing this for completely other reasons. I’m not buying it. The Feds here might not be accustomed to serial killers who use a ritualistic angle, but we are. This is way off the mark.”
Oh, please let that be true.
Gene would give anything for this not to be a religious crime. They were a nightmare, and he was running on fumes.
“Then, there’s my second reasoning on this—and while I’d normally keep it to myself until I was one hundred percent sure, I’d like to not be here for a week working a case, but instead on vacation.”
Oh, he was preaching to the choir on that one.
Gene.
Too.
“Go ahead,” he said, giving his partner the floor on this one.
“This won’t be about some Voodoo practitioner for another reason. Whenever we have ritualistic cases where a religion is involved, it’s seldom what it seems to be—unless this person is brainwashed or ‘off their rocker’.”
Will laughed at the air-quoted term.
“Is that a professional term?” Will asked. “Can I use it in court?”
He laughed.
“Probably not since I’m just an agent, Counselor.
What I’m saying is a person who practices Voodoo isn’t going to point it at themselves.
It might be a Christian doing something and trying to sleight-of-hand this toward another religion, or vice versa, but it won’t be a Voodoo practitioner running this.
It doesn’t benefit them to point the blame at themselves. ”
Corbin was disappointed.
“And here, I was hoping it was. I wanted a Voodoo ritual case,” he said, pouting. “That’s more fun.”
All of the Feds looked at him.
IN.
HORROR.
The only person who said shit like that was a person who never had to deep dive into shit like that.
“Are you loco?” Gene asked. “Rule twenty-five. When you fuck around with someone’s religion, they get mean. REALLY mean. Can I point out the whole David Neives clusterfuck?”
Oh, Corbin recalled.
“For the record, Gene, I’m still not writing them down,” he said, when Gene was watching him and waiting. “I can remember them.”
He hoped so.
Because if anyone needed them, it was their baby detective.
Greyson was curious.
“So the bodies all have markings, and they have broken bones, but it’s not ritualistic? Then what is this person telling us?”
He was to the point.
“I don’t know yet. That is too early to tell,” Ethan admitted. “I need more, and we’ll get that with interviews and home searches. Tomorrow, I’ll have a better idea. I hope.”
Speaking of hope…
That gave Gene hope they might survive this one without getting hurt.
“Really?”
He nodded.
“You can hold me to it. I know normally I’m methodical, but really.
When it comes to cases like this, I’m locked in.
I’ve done quite a few profiles for other agents, and whenever this pops up, it’s never what it seems. On top of that I know that giving you everything early will only benefit us.
We might have to regroup, and backtrack, but chances are we’ll stay ahead of it for once. ”
And that was what they wanted.
Gene trusted his partner.
“We still have to hit that dark club,” he said. “We can’t skip a step.”
Corbin agreed there.
He’d skipped steps, and it bit him in the ass. Lesson learned.
Greyson was curious.
“Dark club? What’s that?”
Corbin pulled up the website on his laptop, and showed them all.
He’d been researching, and found it.
“Here it is. Dark Spirits. It’s the one the detective said he’d gotten a line on regarding the woman.”
It didn’t give them much, but it was all blacks, spooky images, and gave off that vibe.
“And we’re going there?” Will asked.
Gene nodded.
“Yeah, we are. We know that each man was dumped out in the ocean, and they came in on the tide. Where did the first body show up, Corbin?”
He flipped through the papers in the file, and found it. Then, he typed it into the FBI laptop, and it showed him.
“Not far from where the body we found last night was located.”
Ethan was curious.
“Check the second one. The cop.”
He did, and as he did, they waited.
Location sometimes played a big part in all of this, and they knew it.
“Got it,” Corbin said, turning the laptop around to show them. He pointed to the three places.
Greyson saw it.
“They are all within five miles along the coast. With tide, they likely went in the same place.”
That was a good thing.
It made it easier to trace if they needed to go down that rabbit hole. It was less reliable than forensics, but they could pull from it if they needed to.
“We need to keep that on the back burner,” Gene said. “It might help us.”