CHAPTER FIVE
That night, Kate had the dream again. This time, the apartment wasn’t hers, nor was it her mother’s home, nor her childhood home. It was Marcus’s apartment, the one he shared with Cheryl. Kate had never been in that apartment, and she didn’t know how she knew it was his, but she did.
The rest of the dream was the same. The knock. The muttered voice on the other side whispering promises and quoting scripture. The voice, as always, was too low to identify, but Kate knew who it was. It was always the same. Always Elijah Cox.
She never opened the door. She always woke before then. This time, however, another figure got out of bed next to her. His shadow covered her as he moved to answer the knock.
Fear rolled down her spine. “Marcus, no!”
He reached for the door.
Her phone buzzed, and she jolted awake, sighing when she felt herself and the sheets underneath her soaked with sweat.
Marcus groaned and sat up on the room’s other bed, and Kate experienced a fleeting but intense rush of gratitude that they hadn’t been sharing the same bed, and he hadn’t experienced firsthand the night sweats that were Kate’s curse.
One of many, she thought drily.
“Whozzat?” Marcus mumbled.
Kate checked her phone. “Thompson.”
Marcus instantly came the rest of the way awake. “Did they find her?”
Kate answered. “Hello?” She listened, then said, “Thank you. We’re on our way.”
She hung up. “They found her,” she told Marcus. “Motel in New Kensington, fifteen miles northeast. Motel owner said she was shaking and in tears when she arrived. Also covered in blood. Decided the best thing to do was let her rent the room and call the police the moment she was inside.”
“Awesome,” Marcus said, pulling on his pants and grabbing his boots. “One and done. Look at that. When does that ever happen to us?”
“Been a while,” Kate agreed.
She grabbed her bag and headed into the bathroom to change.
Marcus had seen her in her underwear before—it was part of the territory when you traveled all over the country and the FBI’s budget only allowed you to rent one room—but she didn’t want him to notice the sweat drenching her t-shirt and sweatpants or see the tremble in her back.
She also didn’t want to think about him comparing her to Cheryl and thinking about all the ways his wife was better-looking.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
She sighed heavily. If only that verse was enough to keep her thoughts at bay.
***
The Kensington Acres Motel was a quarter-step above most low-budget motels.
The lights in the parking lot all worked, and each letter of the sign was illuminated.
Other than that, it was one of a million cheap rent-a-beds found everywhere in the contiguous United States.
Kate had a feeling this wasn’t the first time a dozen police cruisers crowded its parking lot to arrest a fleeing criminal.
Thompson met them outside, round face pale in the yellow light of the sodium vapor lamps. “She’s barricaded herself in room fourteen. She’s got a knife to her throat. Negotiator’s trying to talk her down, but it’s not looking good.”
“Shit,” Marcus said. “Let me see if I can talk to her.”
“You do that,” Kate said. “I’m going to see if I can get to her from behind and stop her.”
Marcus frowned. “You don’t want to try to talk her down first?”
“I want you to try to talk her down. You’re good at talking. I’m good at catching bad guys.”
“That’s a little reductive,” Marcus complained.
“I can’t wait to read your essay. In the meantime, Thompson, I need a key to that room. Is the owner inside?”
“He’s talking to my lieutenant.”
“Inside or outside?” Kate asked patiently.
“Over there.”
He pointed to a cluster of people—two uniforms, one man in a suit with a badge clipped to his hip, and an older, balding man in a wifebeater and knee-length boxers—standing in front of the motel’s pull-through drop-off curb.
Kate headed over there at a brisk walk, fishing her ID from her pocket just in case the big FBI emblazoned on her vest wasn’t enough.
Sometimes it wasn’t with locals. You never knew.
“Lieutenant?” she called when she got close. “I need to talk to the proprietor.”
The lieutenant, about the same age as the proprietor, but taller, in far better shape, and still in possession of his hair, frowned but didn’t offer a protest. The proprietor looked Kate up and down appreciatively. “Hey there, miss,” he said. “What can I do ya for?”
Yeah, this definitely wasn’t the first time the cops had surrounded his motel. “Special Agent Kate Valentine,” she said, “I need a key to Room 14.”
He blinked. “I mean… the rest of yinz are talking to her outside so’s she doesn’t kill herself. Sure, you don’t want to wait for them?”
“I’m sure. The key, please.”
He shrugged and fished a plastic card from the pocket of what were apparently not boxers. “That’s the master key. It’ll open every door in the place.”
Kate took the key, tried not to think about the origin of the sticky substance on the plastic, and headed into the building. Behind her, the police lieutenant muttered, “Uppity bitch,” under his breath. Misogyny in law enforcement at its finest.
Kate entered the motel, which was decorated with wallpaper sporting coconut palms, surfboards, and crude drawings of misshapen dark-skinned women in bikinis. Because the one thing everyone associated with Pennsylvania was fun in the tropical sun.
A placard on the hallway past the lobby informed her that room fourteen was to her right, so she headed that way.
Several other residents were in the hallway listening to the commotion coming through the door.
When they saw Kate, they started to exclaim, but she chopped her hand for quiet and lifted her finger to her lips.
A few of them crowded closer, and she shooed them away.
She stopped outside the door, held the card to the reader, and winced when it beeped. Fortunately, the beep came at the same time as the suspect shouted, “No! It’s too late! I’m damned!”
“You’re not damned,” Marcus said. “Hell, no one would blame you for what you did. You walked in on your husband getting a blowjob from another woman. Of course you went a little nutzo for a minute.”
Kate rolled her eyes. Jesus, Marcus, real tactful.
She pushed the door open a crack and got her first look at Rosalyn Pierce.
She looked exactly as she had in her picture, short, not fat but plump around her hips.
Her breasts were indeed very large, but they were modestly covered in a long-sleeved shirt.
Her curly hair was matted and plastered to her neck and cheeks, and tears streamed from bloodshot eyes.
She held a knife to her throat and stared through the window at Marcus and an older woman in a police uniform who Kate guessed was the negotiator.
The hand holding the knife was slick with blood and sported several cuts, some of which were scabbed up and some of which had been torn open, probably from when she stabbed her husband to death.
“I know. I know, but I loved him. I just don’t understand. ”
“Come talk to me,” Marcus said soothingly. “Let’s work this out together. You don’t need to do this.”
Kate pushed the door open all the way and crept into the room. Rosalyn was about eight feet in front of her. All she had to do was look right, and she’d see Kate.
Marcus recognized that and angled off. Rosalyn, keeping her focus on him and the officers arrayed outside of her window, turned away from Kate. He stopped and lifted his hands. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be all right.”
Kate moved until she was three feet behind Rosalyn. The weeping widow spluttered. “It’s not. It’s not all right. He’s dead. I’m—”
Kate sprung forward, grabbing the wrist holding the knife in both of hers and spinning around.
She threw the shrieking Rosalyn over her hip and planted her knee on the woman’s chest, still holding the knife.
Rosalyn raked at her face with her other hand, but Kate was able to twist her upper body and keep herself out of the reach of the diminutive Rosalyn.
Marcus leaped through the window and grabbed Rosalyn’s other arm. With both her arms trapped, the fight went out of her. She went limp, weeping and mumbling over and over, “I’m damned. I’m damned.”
When she was cuffed, and the would-be suicide weapon in Kate’s custody, the two FBI agents shared a look.
Marcus’s was full of sadness and sympathy.
Kate couldn’t bring herself to the same place.
There was no excuse for cheating, but there was no excuse for murder.
Rosalyn could have handled this any other way, but she chose to kill her husband and write a Bible verse on the wall in his blood.
It wasn’t Kate’s place to judge, but as Rosalyn continued to moan that she was damned, Kate found herself agreeing.
***
Two hours later, the two agents were enjoying—well, drinking—coffee in the breakroom of the Allegheny County Sheriff’s Office. Rosalyn Pierce had calmed down by the time they reached the station and come clean to the investigators.
It was exactly what it looked like. She caught him cheating, went hysterical, stabbed him to death, then wrote the commandment on the wall and fled the house.
She’d continued to drive around for a while before stopping at the motel when her car was low on gas.
The knife she planned to kill herself with was one she carried in her glove compartment for self-defense.
“She’ll get ten for second-degree,” Marcus said. “Maybe fifteen, but she’ll be out in ten. Folks like a good revenge story, especially when it’s a wife killing a cheating husband.”
Kate frowned at him. “How very enlightened of you.”
He shrugged. “Am I wrong?”
She sighed. “No, probably not.” She sipped her coffee, thought about it, then decided she’d bit back enough of her words. “You looked sorry for her.”
“I am sorry for her. It sucks to be cheated on. Doesn’t mean it’s an excuse for murder.”
Kate looked at him. “Is that what happened? With Cheryl?”
“No, that’s not what happened with Cheryl,” Marcus said in a clipped voice.
“Oh.” Kate’s cheeks flamed. “Sorry, I was just…”
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “No, don’t be sorry. You’re just being a good friend. Cheryl and I got into another fight. I don’t want to talk about it, but it looks like I’m going to be couch surfing for a while.”
Kate blinked. She tried to convince herself it was a bad idea, but she couldn’t quite get there. “You could stay with—”
His phone rang just before she said the critical words. The damning words. She looked away, cheeks burning even brighter. “Cheryl?”
“No, Winters.” He answered. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s over. Open and shut. Woman caught her husband cheating and took a knife to him. Not related to Cox.”
The pause that followed that sentence was longer. The sigh that followed that pause was almost as long. “Right. Okay. We’re on our way.”
He hung up and looked at Kate. “There’s been another murder. Chicago. This one looks a lot more promising.”
Kate sighed and dumped her coffee in the sink on her way out. She didn’t need it anymore.
If this case was connected to Cox, it meant another crazed disciple manipulate by the great criminal mastermind of their generation, but as Marcus drove them to the airport, it wasn’t Cox she feared.
Rosalyn Pierce might have been afflicted with temporary rage when she stabbed her husband thirteen times with a kitchen knife, but she’d been of clear enough mind to write one of the ten commandments on the wall of their kitchen with his blood.
She hadn’t said so, but it was clear to Kate what, or rather who, had inspired that.
Perhaps Cox’s true power wasn’t the sway he held over those in his direct control but the ability his actions had to sway many others.
A scorned wife here, a grieving loved one there, a fanatical churchgoer elsewhere…
Before they knew it, there could be dozens, hundreds of these murders popping up all over the nation.
Maybe that was Cox’s endgame. Not to complete a ritual but to start a revolution.