Chapter Six
Holladay, UT
Police Precinct
Monday Afternoon
Oh, dealing with the crazy was nothing she wasn’t accustomed to, but trying to keep a case that she already had jurisdiction of was a whole other story. It didn’t happen often where she had to do the dance in order to keep control.
Mostly, cops dumped and ran, but now, she was going to have to tap dance around the truth.
Yeah, and she was about to do just that.
Elizabeth was about to finagle her way to lock this down, and hope that this police homicide captain didn’t want the burden of this case. If he did, Elizabeth had to hand it back, or get a judge involved.
And judges didn’t like shit like this.
So, she was going to play it up the only way she could—forensically, and how difficult it would be for them to pay for all of this out of their budget.
There had to be about twenty eyeballs, and that told her that there were MANY victims. That would be a big price tag for the Holladay police.
Hopefully, Captain Frank Volvia wouldn’t want to touch this with a ten-foot pole.
Then again, she rarely wanted to touch half the shit she dealt with either.
Cops had to cop.
As they were driving there, Alex was working not far away, trying to find what she wanted regarding the cemetery and list of people who were buried there.
That was going to be a long-ass list.
“Anything?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I found the name of the one cemetery that is likely being used as the hunting grounds,” he admitted. “It’s Saint Mary’s, and it’s on the outskirts of town. That’s the one tied to the previous police reports.”
Elizabeth went there.
“How did you get the name?”
He was honest.
“The news story published it. I’ve already emailed the church that’s associated with it. They haven’t gotten back to me yet. As soon as they do, I’ll hopefully have a contact name we can use to speak to them about it.”
That worked for her.
At least she was running with experienced agents on this one. Corbin might be new, but Alex was not.
When she glanced over, Gene was also working on something.
“What do you have?”
He shared.
“I’m doing a deep search on the last ten years of cemetery burials from Holladay into that cemetery.
I’m compiling a list from the internet, so that you’ll at least have some names.
The list you want from Alex is going to be HELLA long, and we don’t have the manpower to dig through four hundred burials. ”
That was thinking, and she liked where he was taking it.
She gave him a fist bump.
“Thanks, Partner,” she offered.
The peanut gallery chimed in.
“I would just like to say that it’s kinda wonky that Gene gets to be your partner, when I’ve been with the FBI longer,” Alex said. “Just saying.”
Gene laughed.
“Maybe it’s my shining personality, chuckles. Try harder,” he stated.
Elizabeth just laughed.
“I like to keep it in the family,” she said, making Ivan gag from the front seat.
“WE KNOW.”
She ignored him.
“Anyway, I’ve got a few women who were on that list,” Gene admitted. “There were two hit-and-runs. Tony said BFT to the skull.”
Yeah, he did.
“I need to know how the heads are being de-fleshed or if someone is having a snacky-snack.”
Oh, fingers were crossed that wasn’t the case for all of them. They just recently played that game, and it had been dangerous.
Cannibals were the worst.
Truly.
When Alex’s phone chimed, he pulled it from his pocket, and tossed it to his partner. Corbin opened it up as Alex kept working.
Apparently, he was playing secretary for the man. The hazing was real.
“It’s an email from the church. You have a contact name, and he’s been notified that you’re heading to the cemetery at some point today to talk. His name is Jeffrey Von Gunter.”
She made note.
“We’ll put him on the list. I need to wrap it up with the captain first, to make sure I can keep this case. Then, I need to talk to the owner of the building, to make sure he’s not aware of what the hell is going on. Finally, we’ll deal with Jeffrey.”
Well, it looked as if they had their game plan as they waited on DNA from her team.
When she got a text, just as they were pulling into the police precinct, it was from her other husband.
The ME.
‘Just as a heads-up, I’m going to offer Alexi a job as a backup ME for myself. I need two in order to keep the staffing up. I think he’s going to be perfect for the team.’
Well, yeah, she nailed that one. Never let it be said that her husband wasn’t predictable when giddy.
Shaking his ass in scrubs was a dead giveaway.
“In case anyone is curious, Chris is going to ask Alexi to be on the team. He’s smitten,” she said, clueing them all in.
Immediately, Callen laughed.
“Now I have to hurt him. No one steals my man,” he teased.
That made her snort.
“That’s why I have spares. Someone is always stealing someone away from me,” she said, pointing at Gene and Callen.
Oh, but one of them wasn’t taking that sitting down.
Callen tugged her ponytail in disapproval.
“Mind ya manners.”
This was her being on her best behavior, believe it or not. She was trying.
Rattling off a text, she shared her feelings.
‘I figured as much. You were fawning, and we’re all jealous. Just vet the shit out of him. You know how we’ve been burned before. Your lab is your business. I was hoping for someone more like Zane to have some fun, but…’
She knew that would rile him up.
Half of the fun of being married to this many men was stirring the pot. It made the sex that much more interesting.
And she liked a stirred-up man.
She was crazy like that.
His reply was just a bunch of laughing emojis, and she wasn’t the least bit surprised. Chris liked Zane as a person, but they had opposite ME styles, and that made Chris crazy.
In her world, variety was the spice of life. Look at the four people she was ‘married’ to.
As Ivan parked, she got ready to do her thing. It wasn’t going to be easy, and she hoped the two detectives kept their yaps shut.
As they all got out, security surrounded them, and she gave them all the hairy eyeball. They were up in her business, literally and figuratively. She could smell Uriel’s cologne, and it smelled vaguely like Rayna’s perfume.
That was way too close to her body.
“Guys. We’re at a police precinct. Take a break. Ivan, back down. Get a coffee with Raph and Uriel. I’m going to be good. I think I’m safe one hour in.”
He hesitated, but it wasn’t like she wasn’t right. She could kick the shit out of a few detectives if they got angsty and hold her own with cops.
Besides, it wasn’t like the killer was going to waltz right up to her and shake her hand.
Right?
Not on day one.
“Behave,” he warned, anyway.
There was a coffee shop next door, because cops and donuts were a thing—much like Marines and coffee.
As the detectives approached, she was to the point.
“If I can’t talk him into letting us keep the case, I’m sorry. We’ll tell you what to do, but if they aren’t being murdered by the person collecting eyeballs, I don’t have jurisdiction for someone who likes humping corpses.”
Thank.
Freaking.
God.
That was a small miracle.
“If he tells me that you’ll handle it, I don’t have the leverage to make that happen. There’s no way I can get a Federal judge to tap dance all over this.”
Tora was bummed.
She knew she might never get another chance to work with the FBI, let alone this specific team. They were the gold standard in investigation, and that was as close to getting into the FBI that she was going to get.
“What if we carefully omitted that one part of the information at first? Mac and I were talking. We can leave it out of the report, and that’s on us.
Not you. What if we were willing to take the heat in order to find the victims and get justice?
Even if this is just a sexual crime, the women deserve to have peace in death. ”
She stood there.
It was rare she trusted cops.
Oh, they burned her a great deal, and this was asking her to put it all on the line.
“Give me a second. I need to talk to my team,” she admitted. “Then, we’ll give you an answer.”
They moved away, going to sit on a bench, and Elizabeth had a confab with her people.
She was to the point.
“This is a slippery slope. All of our asses would be on the line, even if they took the heat. No one is going to believe that I didn’t know what was going on. We have the best team in the country.”
That was a very true statement.
Ethan was to the point.
“I think we should do it. This person is going to explode and do something dramatic now that we took his collection. My fear is that they can’t handle what’s coming. We can—more than likely. So it’s get in now, or be called back later, when there could be more casualties.”
Callen went next.
“I’m all about handling it. This is a perfect storyline for a book. Count me in. What’s Axelle going to do? Fire me?” he asked, laughing maniacally. “Oh, no, don’t fire me and let me go make more money at my lucrative job.”
She stared at him.
“I’m confused. So you want to do this to become richer and steal the plot, or get fired so you can become richer while still stealing the plot? This seems to be a win-win for you. That’s not motivation for me,” she admitted. “In fact, it’s the opposite.”
He laughed.
“Money hater.”
She rolled her eyes.
Gene went next.
“I like the weird ones. I’m sick like that. As long as we can wrap this up to get home for your award ceremony at the Conference Center, I’m good with doing it. We have backup, and we’re relatively safe on this one.”
He had a point.
She played along, covering her and Ethan’s trail.
“I mean, if I have to cancel and not go get an award from the president, I’m good with that.”
Ethan wasn’t having it.
“You’re going, or Gabe is having you abducted. Let’s not poke that crazy.”
She laughed.
“Good point,” she said, seeing that Gene was still buying into all of this.
For now.
Her agent went next.
Corbin was to the point.