Chapter 15
T he light was dimming fast—a typical late-afternoon haze settling low over the Everglades, casting the mangroves in copper and gray. Hayes swatted at a mosquito buzzing near his ear as he pushed through a wall of thick palmetto, boots sinking an inch into the soft, wet ground with every step.
Buddy walked ahead, quiet, flashlight in one hand, the other resting on the butt of his sidearm.
They were only a couple of hundred yards from where they’d run into Trent, but the thicket had swallowed the sound behind them.
Out here, it always felt like the land absorbed voices, like the swamp was listening but never speaking.
Hayes caught up just as Buddy stilled, his arm out, signaling him to stop.
“I got something,” Buddy said, voice low.
Hayes stepped up beside him, and his stomach dropped.
She was there—barely visible in the weeds and muck—her body crumpled sideways, one arm outstretched and partially submerged in the water.
Blonde hair, matted with mud and blood. Torn shorts.
A single sneaker, dangling by frayed laces.
Her face was angled away, but Hayes didn’t need to see it to feel the weight of it. The signature was already there.
Her left hand.
Four fingers.
No ring finger.
“Shit,” Hayes muttered, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “Third body in less than two weeks. I don’t need to be an FBI agent to know that means he’s accelerating.”
Buddy crouched beside the girl, careful not to disturb the scene.
“No obvious signs of animal predation. She wasn’t dumped here to disappear.
He wanted her found.” He lifted his chin.
“And you just stumbled into Trent out here.” He sighed.
“I don’t believe in coincidences, but that feels like a setup. ”
“Are you circling back to Cole, because I don’t buy it,” Hayes said. “And Trent Mallor is a lot of things, but he’s more of a lover, not a fighter.”
“Cole might not have solid alibis for a few of our murders, but he was deployed for half of them. He’s not our guy. However, I’ll question him again,” Buddy said.
“You’ll make him nervous. Hell, Dawson makes him fidgety, even though he was a SEAL. It’s the badge. The lack of trust over the way he’s been treated since he left the service.”
“I get that.” Buddy nodded.
“He’ll open up if I’m there.”
“Fair enough.” Buddy craned his neck. “My boss reamed me out about Chloe. Reminded me of all the rules and protocols we’ve broken and then told me to tell her she’s no longer on vacation.
That she’s never been on vacation. He’s making a statement—a very loud one—that he sent her here to be a consultant because of how many missing person cases we have that fit our profile of this killer.
That we’ve kept it quiet because, until recently, there wasn’t enough for us even to form a profile, but that Chloe was working with me—as a consultant, because she’s damn good at her job, and she has insight that no one else does because of her twin. ”
“That’s an interesting way of handling the situation.”
“He’s covering his ass,” Buddy said. “When this is over, I wouldn’t be surprised if our boss either transfers us to a different field office, demotes us, or strips our special agent rank.”
“You really think he’d do that?” Hayes asked.
“If we don’t catch this guy soon, it’s possible. If we make him look good, he’ll just keep being a pain in the ass to work for.”
“Is he that bad?” Hayes continued to move slowly across the mucky land.
“No. Our boss is great. He’s just pissed we didn’t tell him. He hates being in the dark. Only, he wasn’t. He knew. But he feels blindsided by what Stacey did. He doesn’t like not being able to control the narrative.”
“Dawson’s the same way,” Hayes said.
“That brings me to two things.” Buddy let out an exasperated sigh.
“First one is we need to check in with Dawson’s deputies and find out what they found at the other bone sites, and the second one is when I call this in, we’ve got to find a way to keep it quiet.
I don’t want the media out here while my forensics team is collecting evidence.
I especially don’t want that Stacey chick with her camera crew shoving lights and whatnot in my face. ”
“I can have a boat pick up your team over behind the bed and breakfast,” Hayes said. “That will give you a little time. However, you won’t be able to keep it quiet too long.”
“Yeah, I know.” Buddy ran his fingers through his hair. “Now let’s talk about Trent. I had my office look into him. They did a quick background search and checked his whereabouts at the time some of our victims disappeared. He can’t be our guy.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“He was in Dawson’s holding tank at the time of death for Opal Palmer and her lover,” Buddy said.
“My office is doing a deeper dive, and we can question him, but based on that alone, we won’t be able to detain him.
Not even with those rings. Not for very long anyway.
Not even if they belong to this victim. Not unless we find more.
” Buddy shook his head. “This killer is enjoying watching us chase our fucking tails, all while possibly setting up two innocent men who don’t look so innocent from the outside. ”
“That makes for one calculated killer, and one who also expects things to happen in his favor. That can’t always work for him. Things have to go wrong.”
“Maybe they have, but we’ve missed them.
” Buddy nodded. “This isn’t too far from where Trent caught that snake.
” He pointed toward the open waters. “That’s where he said he wrangled that gator.
He mentioned he’d been out here three days, which I might have guessed he’d been out here for a week based on his body odor.
” Buddy fanned his nose. “Who picked the first of the six bone sights that Cole mapped to check out?”
Hayes reached back into his mind to that discussion.
“Chloe and I weren’t sure where to start.
Fletcher made a comment between this site and location six.
Dewey suggested this one first based on the fact that we could start here, and move our way back toward Calusa Cove, and that honestly made the most sense.
” Hayes pointed south-west. “Location six is about twenty miles that way, and location three is ten miles south of that. The rest are too far north to do in a day by water. It would be better to drive north by car, drop a boat in at a park, and drive south and that’s where Dawson’s man is right now. ”
They fell silent for a moment, the croak of frogs and the distant flap of a heron’s wings filling the stillness.
Finally, Buddy stood and exhaled, the breath sharp and tight. “We’re not dealing with a killer who’s getting sloppy. He’s getting bold, and he’s watching. He knows who we’d go to for help.”
“You mean like Dewey?” Hayes asked.
Buddy turned, planting his hands on his hips, and nodded again.
“He’s out here day in and day out, trimming mangrove.
If not him, then that guy Silas. They might as well live in the Glades.
It’s like this guy knows how we think, and he’s going to guide us to the next kill and then tell us how to think.
He’s also going to tell the public how to think. ”
Hayes mulled that over for a hot second. “You think he’s the one feeding info to Stacey?”
“Has to be. Stacey knew Chloe was at the station with Cole. She knew we were treating this like a serial killing. No one leaked it internally—Dawson grilled his deputies, and I grilled my team. This is coming from someone on the outside. Someone playing both sides. Someone who wants to make us look like incompetent fools, all while pinning this on someone else…like a paranoid ex-Marine, or a wild rulebreaker like Trent, and he’s using a starved narcissistic newscaster to do it. ”
Hayes clenched his fists at his sides. “She’s sniffing around for a national spotlight.”
“And someone’s giving it to her. Dawson hasn’t found her yet.
She left the newsroom by the time he got there, and she’s not at home.
It’s like she’s hiding from us, and that makes me think her source—the killer—told her to do that.
If she’s getting fed details from the killer directly.
..” He trailed off, eyes dark. “Makes me wonder about Stacey—whether she knows she’s being used, or if it’s something else. ”
“She’s not old enough to have killed some of the cold cases, but she could have murdered these recent victims. Could we have a copycat? And could it be Stacey?” Hayes couldn’t believe that one, but then nothing in this case made any damn sense.
“Female serial killers are rare, but they happen. However, it doesn’t fit the profile of our unsub we’ve worked.” Buddy shrugged. “Either way, we need to talk to that girl.”
Hayes looked back toward the woman in the mud. “I can’t shake the feeling the killer’s watching, like right now. I feel it in my bones. He’s watching how we react. What we say. Who we trust.”
Buddy nodded grimly. “Yeah, and he’s not just leaving bodies anymore—he’s telling a story with them.
Like it’s all leading up to one final showdown, but we don’t know who’s going to be at the curtain call.
” They stood in silence for a beat before Buddy added, “We knew the cheating was important. Some were married, some weren’t, but finding the ring…
That means something, too—or maybe it’s a deflection at this point.
I don’t know. But he’s framing a narrative. One that he wants us to be part of.”
Hayes’s gaze drifted back to the severed hand, the absence of the ring finger stark against the mud. “Rings are symbols. Commitments. Promises. Those promises were broken. That’s the wound he’s trying to bleed out of every victim.”
“Except now,” Buddy said. “He’s broken his own pattern. He killed a man. Larry Reeding. That wasn’t random. That was intentional. Of course, he was cheating on his wife, so there was that.”
“Or maybe the rules changed the moment he brought things to Calusa Cove,” Hayes offered.
“With L.R., both parties were guilty, so perhaps in his mind those kills are justified and maybe there are others, because we don’t know how many people this asshole has murdered.
However, something made it personal. Something brought it here to Calusa Cove.
We need to figure out what that was.” Hayes exhaled slowly.
“He’s sending messages. Dropping evidence.
Choosing victims we’ll find,” Hayes said, voice low.
“He wants to be heard. He wants someone to know what all this means.” He stared out over the still water, the cypress trees looming like sentinels.
“And we’d better start listening—really listening—or we’re going to have more of these. ”
“You believe our killer is a citizen of Calusa Cove?” Buddy asked.
“We had Paul Massey running drugs and weapons through here for a couple of decades with no one knowing. Not everyone liked Paul, but he’d lived here his entire life and owned a couple of businesses.
As a lawyer, he represented many townspeople.
Paul was a little strange, but he blended in well enough that no one, not even Dawson, suspected until everything began to unravel.
” Hayes cocked his head. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but a serial killer has to do things a certain way, and this guy has a type of person he kills.
He doesn’t shift from that MO, unless he has to, or unless something changes. ”
“That’s pretty standard.” Buddy nodded. “But my next question is, who fits the guy who blends in, but is a ruthless killer?” Buddy waved his hand toward the water.
“This town is full of colorful characters. Silas, for starters. You’re captain, Bear.
He’s interesting. The chick that manages the cabins for Dawson, well, she and her husband make for an odd couple.
You.” He chuckled. “I could go on and on.”
“Yeah.” Hayes nodded as his cell buzzed.
He glanced at the screen. Betsy? That was strange.
He hadn’t talked to her in a few years. If it were important, she’d call back or right away, or text.
He stared at the phone for a second. She’d left a message, so he’d deal with it later.
“I think you should let Fletcher and me transport Trent to the station. We know how to do it quietly.”
“What about Dewey? I know you all seem to trust him, but right now, I don’t trust anyone.”
“Nothing we can do about him knowing we’re bringing in Trent, but he doesn’t have to know about this body.” Hayes swallowed, reaching for his cell. “I’ll text Fletcher and Chloe now. I’ll follow up with Dawson regarding your forensics team. I take it you’ll stay with the body.”
“Yeah, I’ll stay behind.” Buddy held up his hand. “If Dawson finds Stacey, and she’s at the station and sees you bring in Trent, she’s going to stick around, bring in her camera crew, and report on that. She might even call her source.”
“Not my first rodeo dealing with that one.” Hayes arched a brow.
“No one has to know about this body right away. We’re bringing in a man who inhumanely killed a snake and an alligator with the intent to illegally sell their skins and meat.
We don’t have to link it to anything else.
And, for the record, if we have Fletcher, the head of Parks and Rec, bring him in, and she tries to tie him to something else, Dawson will call her out on it, and he’ll do it publicly.
He’s usually a quiet guy and lets things play out, but for that, he’ll push back. ”
“I’ll ask again.” Buddy lowered his chin. “What about Dewey?”
“He doesn’t ruffle feathers unless backed into a corner or someone is messing with the mangrove. He won’t say anything. Trust me. Dewey’s an odd duck, but a good man.”
“Would you have said that about Paul Massey?”
Hayes opened his mouth, and then slammed it shut. He blinked. “Not exactly, but point taken.”