CHAPTER ELEVEN
The dark room, sometimes her mother’s house, sometimes Marcus’s apartment, sometimes a hotel room, but tonight her own apartment bedroom. Creaking footsteps. A voice too soft to understand the words but one that Kate knew belonged to Elijah Cox.
This time the voice was different. This time, instead of knocking, Cox opened the door.
Kate tried to move, tried to cry out for help, but she couldn’t.
She could only lay in the bed, transfixed with terror, while Cox approached.
He was carrying something, something she couldn’t identify in the darkness of the room.
His own face was shrouded, giving him the appearance of a wraith.
Though he was right in front of her, his voice was still too soft for her to make out the words.
He reached for the nightstand on the edge of her bed and set an object down. Kate looked at the object. Terror bubbled up in her throat. Her eyes widened, and she—
“Kate? Kate!”
She flinched and sat bolt upright. Her head collided with something hard, and she winced.
“Ow! Jesus.”
Apparently, the something hard she collided with was Marcus’s head.
“Sorry!” she called. “I had… I’m sorry.”
“Nightmare again?”
Marcus was massaging his nose, and the words came out Nidemare agedd?
“Yeah.” She rubbed the top of her head, wincing at the tender spot where a welt would certainly form. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right.” It's all ride.
He grabbed a pair of tissues from the box on the counter and blew his nose. “Ah,” he said, his voice clear now. “You’ve got a mean headbutt, Vee.”
Kate’s heart fluttered. “You haven’t called me that in a while.”
“What? Vee?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Do you like it?”
She definitely liked it at that moment, but she didn’t want to have a complicated conversation about her feelings right then. “I was just pointing it out. Why’d you wake me up? Was I being noisy?”
“No. I got us a flight to Knoxville. The scene’s been closed and turned over a while ago, but I told Knoxville PD to let Detective Morrow know to expect us.”
“Wonderful,” Kate said, grabbing her bag and starting to change.
“Oh, uh…”
She stopped, realized she was changing in front of Marcus, and flamed bright red. “Sorry. I’ll go to the bathroom.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll turn around.” He laughed nervously. “Not like I haven’t seen you naked before. I mean, I haven’t. Not completely naked, and not in a sexual setting.” He whistled. “Boy, I’m talking a lot.”
Kate’s own embarrassment was off the charts, but something in Marcus’s embarrassment started a glow inside of her. She regarded him, taking advantage of his averted eyes to look him up and down. “Why don’t you make some coffee and give your mind something to do other than dig a deeper hole?”
“That sounds excellent,” he agreed, striding toward the compact drip maker.
And just like that, Kate’s nightmare had faded. Take that, Cox.
Still, underneath the glow Marcus had sparked within her was a restlessness, a certainty that she had just missed something important, something meaningful.
Whatever object Cox had laid on the nightstand was important.
Kate didn’t know what it could be or how she knew it was important, but she knew it was.
She put it aside for now. If the dream was important, it would come back to her. In the meantime, she had the real Cox to worry about.
***
“I just don’t see how this tragedy rates an FBI investigation,” Ray said. “My initial investigation found no reason to suspect this was anything more than a burglary gone wrong.”
Kate regarded Ray and decided that some stereotypes still held true.
Detective Ray Morrow was a bull of a man, an inch taller than Marcus and a good forty pounds heavier.
Most of that was fat, but his hands were the size of Thanksgiving turkeys, and the callouses on the fingertips hinted at real strength underneath the bulk.
He had a handlebar mustache that connected to mutton chops.
No beard. The facial hair and the head hair were the same shade of polished stainless steel, though most of the head hair was hidden underneath a wide-brimmed cowboy hat.
He looked exactly the way Kate would imagine a grumpy, old-fashioned middle-aged cop looked.
“You have that in common with the local departments in four other cities, Detective Morrow,” Marcus replied. “It wasn’t until the sixth victim exhibiting the same pattern that someone got wise to the fact that we’re dealing with a serial killer.”
“What pattern? Breaking and entering? Manual strangulation? That’s too many murders to count!”
“These particular scenes are unique in two ways,” Kate explained. “First, they all occurred in dioceses where a visiting priest was recently in the area, and second, the killer is leaving an object at each scene positioned to send a message.”
“What message?”
“We believe it’s related to the eighth commandment,” Kate replied.
“Like the ten commandments?”
“Exactly.”
“Which one’s the eighth?”
“Thou shalt not steal.”
A flash of triumph crossed Morrow’s face. He lifted his chin and folded his arms over his chest. “Well, we ran Mr. Delaney’s background. He has no criminal record.”
His eyes flicked to the left when he said that. Kate held his gaze. “You’re certain of that?”
“I am.”
“Nothing sealed or expunged?”
“Well, if it’s expunged, then by definition, it wouldn’t be on his record.”
“So sealed then.”
Morrow shot daggers at her. “I’m not opening a sealed record.”
“You sure are.”
“No, I’m…” Morrow rolled his eyes. “Respectfully, ma’am, I don’t believe this case warrants a federal investigation.”
Marcus lost his patience. “Okay, so we’ll look around, decide, ‘Oh gosh, looks like there’s nothing here,’ then move on. Or we’ll find something, and maybe it’ll help us find a serial killer. Why is this such a big deal?”
Morrow flashed Marcus a look he probably thought was mean but came across as petulant. “We like handling our own problems here. We don’t like Washington meddling in our business.”
“Well, you’re in luck,” Kate said. “We’re from Portland, Maine.” Before Morrow could work that thought out in his head, she added, “I want to look at that sealed record.”
“You’ll have to talk to the court, then,” Morrow replied stiffly. “As far as I’m concerned, this case is closed.”
Kate glared at Morrow, but if Morrow wasn’t willing to budge, Kate couldn’t force him, and in the case of a sealed record, she couldn’t claim obstruction. She made no attempt to hide the sarcasm in her voice when she said, “Thank you for your time, detective.”
Outside, Marcus asked, “Wonder what stick crawled up his ass and died?”
Kate chuckled. “I don’t think that’s the phrase you’re looking for.”
“It’s exactly the phrase I’m looking for. The guy acts like we’re here specifically to make sure he loses his job.”
“Maybe he thinks he will. People don’t like hearing that their local police department dismissed a case that turned out to be a notorious serial killer.”
“Well, he should lose his job.” Marcus sighed. “And I guess we should head to the courthouse.”
“You handle that,” Kate said. “I want to look at the crime scene photos again. It sucks that they’ve already turned it over. I feel like the attention to detail matters.”
“He’s shown the same attention to detail at all of his scenes, though. Why do you think this one is special?”
Kate frowned. “Maybe it’s not,” she admitted. “I just… I feel like if I could just put myself in his shoes for a minute, get an idea how he thinks, maybe I could figure out how to stop him for good.”
“I’ve got an idea how to stop him for good.”
Kate didn’t like Marcus’s tone. She liked the look on his face even less.
It was oddly flat, not dark so much as emotionless.
For the first time since meeting him, she saw the Navy SEAL, the trained killer who could think of human lives as targets when the mission required it.
She understood the urge to apply that training to Cox, but this wasn’t war, and the FBI wasn’t the military.
“He needs to be brought to justice, Marcus. We can’t stoop to his level, or it becomes about winning a fight and not punishing a crime. The nation needs to see our process work.”
“Well, I think Olivia Prentiss would have been just fine seeing Cox dead and her mother alive.”
Kate didn’t reply to that. What could she say?
Marcus sighed. “Relax. I’m not going to do anything stupid. I’m just mad.”
“I’m mad too,” Kate sympathized, “but being mad won’t help us either.” Marcus gave her a dry look, and she reddened. “I understand the hypocrisy, but I stand by my statement. We’ll keep each other in line, deal?”
“Deal. And on that note, why do you need to put himself in his shoes? Why does there need to be some reason he thinks the way he does other than the fact that he’s a psychopath?”
The real worry Marcus wasn’t touching was his fear that Kate would fall into her old obsession, seeing Cox as an arch-nemesis hellbent on her own destruction. The truth was that she’d already come to that conclusion. Cox had made it inescapable.
But that was an argument she’d never win, so she gave Marcus an answer more narrowly focused on the case.
“We need to know why he’s choosing these exact victims. We need an idea of where to look for him.
Right now, we’re following a trail of breadcrumbs.
We need to figure out where he’s going, not where he’s been. ”
Marcus nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll call the court and get those records. Let me know if the photos reveal anything interesting. You want the car? I’ll walk to the courthouse, and you can pick me up later.”
“Sure.”
“Cool. See you in a bit.”
“See you in a bit.”
Knoxville was the first city they’d come to where no snow had fallen.
Snow wasn’t unheard of here, but it rarely stayed around.
That left nothing to soften the bleached skeletons of the maples, oaks, and poplars that lined the streets and filled the barren parks.
Unlike Greenfield where most of the trees were green and only a few leafless examples peeked through the green, the only evergreens here were pines, and those lived almost exclusively in the hills surrounding the city.
To Kate’s eye, they looked like spectators, watching death consume the city below while keeping a safe distance away.
She stopped at a restaurant several blocks from downtown that advertised STEAKS ALL DAY!
with a picture of a smiling cowboy licking his lips while grasping an oversized fork and steak knife while a saxophone player with a flattop haircut and big sunglasses performed a spirited solo, the flaps of his tuxedo flicking jauntily upward.
Kate stepped inside and found the dining room moderately full.
Shockingly, most of the people in the room wore ordinary t-shirts and jeans with windbreakers rather than tuxedoes and ten-gallon hats.
They all wore muddy boots, though the thick rubber soles and scuffed steel toes reminded Kate more of logging boots than ranching boots. Not that she would know the difference.
She sat at the bar, and a buxom woman of about fifty with straw-colored hair and more makeup than she needed sidled over to take her order. Kate ordered a coffee, steak, and eggs with house potatoes on the side.
The food came, and the matronly server asked, “You in town for long, honey?”
Kate wasn’t in the mood for conversation, so she politely replied, “Not long,” then pointedly started on her meal.
The server got the message and sidled along to the next guest.
She looked through the crime scene photos on her phone while she ate. Why these victims, and what was Cox’s message? What was Kate supposed to glean from these misplaced objects?
Paul Delaney’s cufflinks in the key bowl. She’d come back to that one.
Ruth Osgood's dog in her bed. Loving her sin.
Being fulfilled by it. Jordan Prescott's pocket watch in his kitchen.
Maybe not loving it anymore, but needing it.
It was sustenance to him. Karen de Luca's music box on the outside of tightly drawn curtains.
She wanted to hide her sin. She was ashamed of it.
Gloria Prentiss's thimble in the bathroom window.
Visible, but not out in the open. Private but not hidden.
She tried to make amends, not over the thimble but the photograph. A start, but not enough.
Finally, Warren Schulz. He repented completely. He returned all of the items he stole, except one. He held onto the cardinal. Maybe that was a sign that he repented, but not with a perfect heart.
Kate poked at her potatoes while the pattern solidified in her mind. Each victim was a progression along the path to repentance. Loving sin, then not loving but needing it, then feeling shame, then starting to make amends, then making more amends.
So back to Paul Delaney. Cufflinks in the bowl right on top of his car keys.
Not something to be hidden, and not something to be loved in private like Ruth Osgood in her bedroom but something he flaunted.
Maybe not to others, or he wouldn’t be a very successful thief, but something about which he felt no shame.
Shame. That’s what it was. That was the key.
No, not shame. Repentance. Cox was illustrating the progression of repentance.
So what came next?
Someone who repented fully. Someone who completely relinquished their crimes and made a full change. Cox wouldn’t see that as enough to protect them from punishment. His God didn’t repent. That was for sinners.
But Cox might consider the death of such an individual as the culmination of the process. They had repented. Now they were going to Heaven, redeemed of their sin.
She smiled, for the first time feeling like she had a read on Cox. She just needed to find someone repenting completely of their sin of theft.
Her smile faded. That could describe so many people. Thousands, possibly.
If she couldn’t find the needle in this haystack, she’d discover it when they received a phone call about another body.