Chapter Eleven #4
As soon as he was finished, the principal picked it up from there.
“So, after Tristan convinced me that she wouldn’t have just flaked, we called the non-emergency police line for a well-visit. I thought it was extreme, but it turns out she was missing. The cops told us she wasn’t at home, but her car and purse were there.”
Gene was curious.
So, he went there.
“So, was it the media call just now that alerted you to her death? Because that would be a quick switchover from vigil to memorial.”
Robert explained.
“Well, no, the media just now didn’t clue us in. Granted, all of this was a vigil, but this morning, as I was waking up, I put on the news. It was all over it that she, and two other women were found dead. So, we switched to memorial.”
Once more, the media was up in their case.
That also explained why they were calling the school. Soon, they’d be calling the bar, and the store where the other victims worked.
Damn it.
What was annoying wasn’t that these people were talking to the media, but that someone let it leak, and now, the media was going to get in their way.
“Did they now?”
Robert nodded.
“Yeah, the news said that her identity was confirmed, and I had to come in and tell everyone.”
Well, shit.
Ethan pulled the flier out that the captain had given him. It was the same one the man at the copier was printing out, except his said vigil.
The new one said memorial.
“Is she dead?” Tristan asked. “Really?” he asked with tears in his eyes. “I had hope that the media was wrong, but with you guys here…”
Ethan and Gene both nodded to confirm what was being said.
Well, the cat was out of the bag, so there was no point in sugarcoating it.
“We’re sorry, but she is. It was definitely Ivey.”
There was silence.
Finally, the principal spoke.
“Well, that’s shitty,” Robert said. “Who would hurt Ivey? She was the sweetest woman in the world. Everyone loved her!” he admitted, his voice full of emotion.
Yeah, they could see that.
The school employees were definitely fond of the woman if the balloons, ribbons, and memorial said anything.
From where he stood, making copies, Rodney sighed.
“One of my students told me she has a snack closet in her room for kids who need food. She genuinely loved her job and her kids. They feel the same. They love her so much. I hate that we’re going to have to burst that bubble of hope.”
Yeah, that was going to suck.
Now, the other man, the balloon blower, was sobbing. Tristan was taking this hard.
Robert hugged him.
“It’s okay,” he said. “The FBI will find who hurt her,” he added. “And the other two women who she was found with, Tristan.”
Well, apparently that was out of the bag, too.
It sucked that someone had been running their mouths, and since there were only so many people who knew there were three bodies and had ID…
Like the cops.
Like the ME.
And them…
Someone ratted them out to the media.
Because the media had been lurking around the scene, but they didn’t know the specifics regarding the crime scene deep on the reservation.
They’d blocked it off.
Callen’s deputies had made sure they stayed off of the reservation land. This was a problem. It put a bullseye on them, as the investigators.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Ethan said.
That was when Tristan got angry.
“I’d bet it was that deadbeat asshole,” he blurted, suddenly. “He never treated Ivey well. She came in crying before work a few times because of him!”
Woah.
Stop the wagon.
That she’d come in crying…that could be part of this.
Gene flipped through his notes.
“Would that be Randal Crest?” Gene asked. “She recently broke up with him, right?”
Tristan nodded.
“Finally,” he said. “He was a piece of shit to her, and she finally got the nerve to dump him! I hate him!”
Gene slowed his roll.
“We haven’t spoken to him, so we don’t know that he hurt Ivey. Unless you know something that is evidence.”
That hung there with an uncomfortable silence.
So, the principal spoke up.
“He’s right, Tristan. Spreading that around can ruin lives. So, let’s allow the FBI to do the work, and then wait to see if he had something to do with it,” Robert said, chastising his employee.
Immediately, Tristan calmed down, but it was clear he was super emotional, and no one blamed him.
“Do you know anything?” Ethan asked, needing to make sure.
Tristan zipped his lips so damn fast.
Oh, and that was the last thing they wanted him to do.
“I can’t do this. I just lost my bestie. I’m going to go get more balloons,” he said, heading back into the other glass-lined office.
Once inside, the women there comforted him, and the two Feds kept working.
“I’m sorry about that,” Robert offered. “They were really close.”
Ethan brushed it off.
The last thing they were doing was browbeating friends of the victim. He knew this was a hard time for them. Hopefully, they didn’t hear how she died.
“Don’t stress it. Just focus for us. Did she ever mention anyone bothering her to either of you?” Ethan asked. “Randal included?”
Robert shook his head.
And so did Rodney.
“She was always upbeat at lunch. I hate to think that she was keeping something like that to herself.”
Yeah, them too.
Robert shared.
“She never said a word to me. Never. In fact, I didn’t know about her ex.”
Well, that was a dead end.
Ethan glanced over.
When he nodded, his partner knew what he wanted. So, Gene pulled up pictures of the other two women.
“Can we ask if you recognize Ivey with either of these women?” he asked.
Robert took his phone and looked at the driver’s license photos of the two other women.
He shook his head.
“No, never. Have you seen these women?” he asked Rodney.
The man did the same thing.
“No. Are they teachers? From what I heard, Ivey spent most of her time with the friends she had here,” he said, finishing his photocopying.
Blackhawk shook his head.
“No, they weren’t teachers.”
Well, the man shrugged.
“Sorry, I can’t offer more,” he added. “Ivey didn’t really share personal things with me,” he stated, and then, he pointed toward the principal’s office. “I’m going to check on Tristan. He’s struggling with this,” he admitted.
When he walked away, Robert put two and two together and figured it out.
“Are they also dead?” he whispered. “Are they the two other women the media reported being dead, too?”
Gene nodded.
“Yes. They were found with Ivey.”
His face said it all.
“Is this a serial killer?” he asked. “Do we have one hurting women?”
They needed to slow that down and for one major reason. The last thing they needed was the media all over this calling it some stupid name to get attention.
Their jobs were easier if they didn’t have to worry about the media up their asses.
“We don’t know. We can’t discuss the case further than we have,” he admitted. “This is about learning about Ivey, in hopes it will bring us closer to figuring out who did this.”
Robert heard a muffled sob coming from the office, and it was everyone trying to help Tristian through this moment.
“I wish we could help you more, but Ivey was a sweetheart. No one had a bone to pick with her. Please let us know if we can help. She was our family.”
He had the detectives’ notes, but he was curious.
“Can you tell me if everything was normal the day she left?” he asked.
Robert nodded.
“Yeah, she waved and headed out. I don’t know if you need to know what she was wearing, but it was a fun plaid outfit with a bright, sunny bag.”
They didn’t need to know since she was found naked and skinned.
But he kept that to himself.
“Other than that, she walked out alone, and that was the last time we saw her. She was teacher of the month, so she had a parking space right next to mine in the reserved section.”
They made notes.
“Thank you for your time, Robert. We appreciate it,” he said, and then, Ethan shook his hand since he’d gotten all he could.
And it was a decent lead.
They now knew that the first victim’s ex might have been problematic in a plethora of ways.
Hopefully, they’d be able to connect Randal to the others. For now, though, this was going to be about picking through the leads they got, and hoping there were no more victims.
Gene also shook his hand.
“Thank you,” he said to him. “Tell Tristan we’re sorry he lost his friend, and that we will do everything to figure out what happened to her.”
The man nodded, and they headed back out the way they came in, leaving the teachers to continue preparing for that afternoon’s memorial.
When they were alone, where they could talk, Ethan went there.
“We need to run a bunch of people. Tristan at the top of the list,” he said.
Gene was curious.
“You think he was off and that wasn’t genuine mourning?” he asked.
Oh, Ethan did think it was off, and he explained to his partner.
“When we introduced ourselves, he sounded…gay.”
Immediately, Gene lifted a brow.
He wasn’t quite sure where he was taking this because they were both ‘gay’, and they sounded like people. Had Ethan lost his goddamn mind?
“And what does gay sound like, asking for a man having sex with another man?”
He stopped him before he could get prickly. That was one of Gene’s tender spots, and he didn’t want him to think he was poking it.
“Slow your roll down that hill. It doesn’t have a sound.
He spoke in a more feminine way, like he was trying to come across as gay instead of genuinely being gay.
It sounded fake. Then, slowly, as he talked to us, he started talking more like us, and masculine.
Less…showy. All I’m saying is that it sounded forced at first.”
Gene hadn’t noticed.
“Really?”
He nodded.
“It was that overly flamboyant-sounding tone, where you know immediately a person is gay. It was exaggerated. It felt…performative.”
Now, Gene got it.
This wasn’t a shot at him, or gay people, but Ethan trying to explain it from a non-gay, or bi angle. That he understood. Ethan had a different perspective coming from someone who had been straight for almost thirty years.
“I’ll run him in the car and start working on all the teachers there. I’ll use the school’s website to get their names. We’ll see what pops up on him and go from there.”
Ethan looked at his watch.
It was mid-morning, and he could use some fuel. Plus, if he knew he was hungry, Gene would be ravenous.
“Let’s get something to eat. We can’t have you hangry and unpredictable,” he said, as they walked out the front doors of the school—only to be assaulted.
By.
The.
Media.
Well, shit.
They had to be followed there. They were now on the media’s radar.
“Agents! Is there a serial killer in Damascus?” someone shouted.
And the questions kept coming.
“Why has the FBI been called in?” someone else called.
They were relentless.
“Are the women in Damascus in danger?”
Oh, boy.
Ethan knew one thing.
It was a damn good thing that he gave Gene that candy bar.
Because this was definitely going to make him hangrier.
And downright mean.