Chapter 11
“Burning the midnight oil?” Knox said, stepping into the incident room.
Dover had been standing at the front of the room staring at the boards for the last half hour.
Everyone else had already headed home. There wasn’t anything more they could do today, but she just couldn’t bear to leave.
There had to be more, if she could just see it.
“How did you get up here?” she asked without turning around.
“Charm,” he answered. “Works every time.”
“My credentials might have had a little something to do with it too,” another voice said. This time she turned around to find her brother-in-law, a GQ-worthy man with cheekbones that could cut glass standing next to Knox.
“Should have known it was the G-man brother-in-law,” she said.
“That sounds ominous. You know you shouldn’t believe everything he tells you.”
“I’ve figured that out, yeah. What I don’t understand is why he thought we needed a fed just to follow my brother’s no-account girlfriend around. I mean, I don’t think she’s deadly.”
“You don’t know that. Besides, I’m just trying to keep it in the family. He could use some time away from our sister anyway. A sort of impromptu vacation.” She noticed the smirk Dex fired at Knox.
Somehow, she doubted anything involving Knox turned out to be a vacation. From the stories he had been telling her, death and destruction followed in his path.
“Don’t let the fancy clothes fool you, he’s good at his job,” he continued.
“You’re going to spoil me being this nice,” Dex said, smoothing away the nonexistent wrinkles in his starched polo shirt.
“Saved my ass a time or two also.”
“Now you’re just gushing.”
Dover watched as the two men sparred good-naturedly. She wondered if the entire family was nuts or if she had just drawn the crazy ones. It made her curious to see what the rest of her siblings were like.
“Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you,” Dex said, motioning to the whiteboards.
“Yeah, we could use a break,” she agreed. “No one remembers seeing these guys downtown, but the bar scene gets pretty hectic on the weekends. There’s something here, I just can’t see it.”
“Do you mind telling me what you do have? Sometimes it helps me to talk through the evidence.”
“Sure, it’s worth a try. Death was by manual strangulation with some sort of belt. All of the victims were staged at private school athletic fields,” she said. “A religious medal on each body. All the bodies were nude.”
“The St. Matthew medal is interesting. There’s a lot to unpack. Does he crave power? Control? Are they sexually motivated?”
“Sean…I mean, the medical examiner found no trace of sexual assault.”
“Okay, I would wager there is a sexual element somewhere though. What does the private school mean? Is there a socioeconomic meaning?” Dover watched as Dex trolled over the boards expressing his thoughts. “Did he attend one of the schools. Is he Catholic, or is that a red herring?”
“One of the schools is Episcopal, so I don’t think he’s necessarily Catholic,” she said.
“I know St. Matthew is the patron saint of the money lenders. I have quite a few of my students who are on scholarship. They’re brilliant, they just don’t have the funds,” Knox said, taking a seat.
“That’s true. Did something happen to him at a private school? Was he bullied? He’s comfortable moving around them. I assume there’s not great CCTV coverage of the fields.”
“Not really. Danny sent what we could get to tech, but they haven’t found anything.”
“It’s a good guess he didn’t start with these three. He had to have worked up to this. So what was his first kill? I would look through records for any other offenses within the private school community.”
“Already on that. I have records being pulled for up to thirty years previous. I don’t think there will be many, and most incidents are dealt with internally to save the families public scrutiny.”
“Yeah, I don’t know if that will pop much, but it’s worth trying. How did he get the bodies into the dump sites?”
“It looks like he has keys or is very good at working padlocks. I can’t imagine any of the school employees opening the gates after hours for him.
We haven’t found any employees that have all the schools in common either.
We’re trying to run the kids to see if any of them overlap.
All three schools are fighting that, citing privacy issues. ”
“How busy are the areas the schools are in?”
“Very. One is even near a hospital with people coming and going all the time.”
“Interesting. So he’s very sure of himself. Any drugs found in their systems?”
“Nothing. Not even an aspirin in their stomachs. The medical examiner did find a puncture mark in the necks of all the men.”
“So he’s keeping them long enough for anything to process out of their systems.” Dex stopped and studied the boards for a long time.
Dover opened her mouth several times to say something but thought better of it.
Finally, he shook his head and turned to her.
“I’m sure you’re fine without my interference. ”
“I’m good with any thoughts you have.”
“Well—” Knox started.
“Not you,” she shot back. Dex rolled his eyes, but she noticed he did it with a slight smile.
“Why don’t you give me your profile of him first?”
She took a deep breath before starting. “White male, twenty-five to thirty-five. I’m going to say he comes from a wealthy family, but that’s up in the air if Knox is right, and he had been on scholarship. I think he knows these schools too, so he’s from this area.
“All of these men seem to be in successful careers according to what we’ve discovered. They were all either making six figures or had the potential to soon. All of their supervisors sang their praises.
“I wonder if he is working alone. It would help if anyone at the bars they were at remembered them. We did have one remember a blonde woman, but that’s not much to go on. They just seem to disappear after that until they turn up on a sports field.”
“Why is he angry with these men or type of men?” Dex mumbled. “I think you’re going in the right direction, you just have to figure out what picture he’s painting. I would leave it until tomorrow. Come back in when you’ve had a chance to sleep on it.”
“I agree with Dex,” Knox added. “How about something to eat followed by a good night’s rest. You’ll be ready for tomorrow.”
“Are you needing a bed too?” she asked, giving in. She really could use some sleep.
“A bed? Don’t tell me he’s staying with you,” Dex said with a laugh. “I’ve got a room, but thanks.” They followed her into the hallway.
“That’s good because all I have left is a couch. Let me grab my stuff, and we can go.” She disappeared into her office. After pulling her purse from her desk drawer, she closed the door on the way out. “Where are we eating?”
“Some place quiet,” Knox answered. “I figured we could fill Dex in on Fox while we eat.”
“Sounds good. Follow me.” She led them through the building and outside. She debated for a minute questioning the desk sergeant about letting them in, but decided she was too tired to bother. Besides, she was sure she would have let a man with an FBI badge and those cheekbones in the door too.
She led them to a pub between the police department and her apartment.
Knox had quickly acquired a taste for Irish pub food, so she knew he would approve of her choice.
Pulling into a parking space, she climbed out of her car and met them at the door.
The hostess took them to a table at the back away from the late-night bar crowd.
“I had a thought on the way over here,” she said when they settled in a booth. “Would you mind coming in tomorrow and reading through the files. Just see if there’s anything we missed. We’ve all looked at it so many times now, I worry about what we’re overlooking.”
“I’d be happy to. First, though, I want to hear how you got the drop on this guy,” Dex answered pointing at Knox.
“What? Like it’s hard?” She laughed when Knox scowled.
“I wouldn’t say she got the drop on me. Memphis was dragging his feet again, or I wouldn’t have been looking over my shoulder.”
“That’s not what I saw,” she added. “Memphis isn’t the one who barreled around that corner. In his defense, he didn’t know what he was walking into.”
“I would have paid good money to see that,” Dex said.
“I didn’t know he had a bum knee, or I would have gone a little easier on him. I will next time.”
“Please, don’t do me any favors,” Knox grumbled. “Her brother is much nicer.”
“Harsh,” she argued. “Anyway, about Fox. I still don’t know if I buy into the idea of following Brooke. Even if she’s cheating on him, he’ll never break up with her. It would mean losing Ethan. He would never stand for that.”
“But you agreed the best case would be for Bailey to get custody of Ethan, then Fox would be free to leave her,” Knox pointed out.
“Yeah, but how do we do that?”
“Leave it to me. In the meantime, Dex can find out what’s happening.”
“Honestly, I’m not sure how this will help anything either,” Dex admitted.
“I just want to know what she’s about before we take a chance on having to identify Fox’s body at the morgue,” Knox said. “Don’t look at me like that,” he added when Dover scowled. “Something’s going on with her. I’m pretty good at recognizing when something isn’t right now.”
“He’s not wrong,” Dex added. “Knox said she works at a spa during the day?”
“Yeah, it’s not too far from where they live and the precinct,” she agreed.
“Then I’ll come to your office for as long as you need me this week, and in the evenings, Knox and I can check out your brother’s girlfriend. No harm, no foul. We just need to know when she’s going out,” Dex said.
“I’ll tell Fox that the next time Brooke goes out to let me know so I can come hang. Even if I have to cancel, at least we’ll know she’s out of the apartment,” she added.
“Like I said before, we’ll give you everything we learn, and you can decide what to do with it,” Knox promised.
“It just feels weird. Did you stalk any of the other siblings like you are us?” she asked.
“He did taser Memphis and tie him to a chair,” Dex said.
“Flint, our youngest brother, found us. Since he was still a college kid, Knox was nicer to him. Tyler he met while she was still in high school. She was the only sister. There’s also the fact that she’s stronger than all of us put together and can break him in half, so no on that front.
I think he just likes jacking with Memphis the most.”
“Friggin’ hell. Why does he even talk to you?”
“It’s the charm,” Knox answered with a grin.
“Sure, that must be it,” she said with a smirk.
“Hey, I did introduce him to his wife.”
“Actually, Memphis rescued Thayer from a root cellar after she’d been abducted and used for an extortion scheme. I was the agent on that case,” Dex added.
“Well, that just sucked all of the romance out of it,” Knox teased.
“Memphis almost died,” Dex continued. “There was nothing romantic about it. Glad they wound up together in the end. Oh, Knox also burned Memphis’s house to the ground. But,” he said, raising his hand when Knox opened his mouth to protest, “he was trying to save him from getting gunned down.”
“Why do I feel there’s a lot more to my new family than I previously thought?” she asked.
“A lot more. That doesn’t even cover how his wife was kidnapped by a Houston gang to be sold into slavery or how she was entrapped in New Orleans by a crime boss. As I’ve learned in the short time I’ve known this family, there is a lot more than meets the eye. How much time do you have?”