Rock You Like a Hurricane
Theresa has barely had time to register the reality of the double homicide when Captain Armstrong pulls into the drive, cutting his siren as he sees them all standing there, faces set and pale.
He is a big man with a freshly trimmed fade, calm, gentle, and fair, not suited for the gritty police work on the Atlanta streets where he trained.
Malogen is much more his speed. They’ve not had a murder in ten years.
He gets out of the cruiser tentatively, as if slowing down might stop the horrible news from reaching his ears.
Theresa fills him in, then, after a warning that he’s about to witness something that will rock him to the core, walks him through the scene and into the kitchen. She steadies him when he gasps in horror.
“My God, who could do this?”
“I don’t know,” she says, honestly, because even if it was the stranger who cut her, she has no idea who he is.
And if Andrew is responsible, then he’s as much a stranger as the visitor.
But it doesn’t look good for him, regardless.
His first wife was murdered. Ten years later, his second wife is hit by an SUV and might be dead.
That same evening, his parents are slaughtered, and Theresa herself is threatened.
Something huge is happening, and she has no idea what it is.
“What the hell did you do to your hand?” Armstrong asks, reaching for her wrist. She pulls her hand back to her chest.
“Uh . . . it’s nothing. I was cutting an apple, and the knife slipped. A few stitches and I’ll be fine.” It’s as good a lie as any. She knows in her gut not to mention the caller. If this carnage is his handiwork, she’s lucky to still be breathing.
“Get it stitched up before you do anything else, you hear me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Theresa? You know you can talk to me, right? Don’t bottle this up.”
“Heard, sir. We should go to the garage now.”
“Is it worse?”
“Yes and no. This is all bad, sir. All bad.”
When they finally cut down Colonel Locke, the truth is revealed—he was alive when he was strung up. His eyes are bright red, the petechial hemorrhage of his sclera a telltale giveaway of suffocation. He is transported with the cord still wedged into the skin of his neck.
Mrs. Locke’s injuries are just as horrific. In addition to the ruby necklace, there are deep contusions on her face and arms, and she is missing two fingers.
The coroner shows up and decides almost immediately that, considering the magnitude of the case, the autopsies would best be handled by the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s office rather than his own.
“Why?” Theresa asks. “You are the best in the area.”
She’s not kidding. Reginald Booker is solid. The town’s sole doctor, he still makes house calls and treats his vocation as something sacred, a service to his community. He’s smart, and she trusts him to do this right.
“Because we are friends,” he says simply, and she nods. She wants him, not a stranger in Fulton County, but she’s not about to force him into it. She puts her good hand on his shoulder in sympathy.
“I can’t say that I blame you. This one’s going to be hard all the way around. When did you see them last? They’ve become pretty reclusive.”
“They have. But I was here three days ago.” He mops his face with his sleeve, drying up the tears.
“Lucy’s been fighting some pneumonia—they both had COVID earlier this year, and she wasn’t bouncing back as well as I’d hoped.
The antibiotics I prescribed were causing some issues with her heart, and I was in regular contact to make sure she was doing okay.
Andy was worried about her, understandably. ”
“Have they talked to Andrew recently? Did they say?”
He shakes his head. “As far as I know, they haven’t heard from him in years.
The situation with Chloe’s death and Andrew’s leaving has broken them both.
” With a glance over her shoulder, he touches her arm and gently leads her away from the scrum of first responders.
He pitches his voice low. “Whoever did this was sadistic. They died in great pain. You can’t think it was Andrew. ”
“I don’t know what to think, Reggie. Andrew was in Atlanta yesterday and walked out of the airport, leaving his young family behind.
Then his wife was hit by a car and gravely injured.
Now his parents are tortured and murdered?
” She doesn’t bother with her own brush with death.
“It’s all tied to Andrew. All of it. Of that I have no doubt. ”
“But was he the one holding the knife?”
“I don’t know.”
It takes several more hours to work the scene.
Despite the cold, fat flies bumble through the house, seeking their bloody treats.
Fulton County is overwhelmed and bumps her to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in Decatur.
The GBI is happy to get involved, especially when she mentions the case’s ties to Drake in Quantico.
Turf war—they want the glory. They send their people for the bodies.
Before they leave, the EMTs stitch her hand and give her both a tetanus shot and an antibiotic booster; their well-practiced bandages are much more comfortable than her makeshift one earlier.
They make her take a painkiller with some codeine in it, and between it and the numbing lidocaine, she feels floaty, and that’s honestly not a terrible thing, considering.
A call to Drake to fill him in goes unanswered, so she leaves him a brief, succinct message.
And the whole time, she can’t shake the feeling that every move she makes is being watched. Judged. Measured.
She lines up the facts. Andrew nearby. Eden calling her to meet Andrew’s new wife, who is severely injured in front of her eyes. His parents, gruesomely murdered, Theresa first on the scene.
Everything they have points to Andrew.
But the stranger who followed him from the airport, and her nocturnal visitor .
. . She flexes her hand. A man who attacks a cop in her own home is more than capable of murdering two old people, right?
To what end, though? Sending a message? Information gathering?
If he killed them, why hadn’t he just killed her, too?
You know it’s both, Theresa. You don’t torture people if you don’t need information. He was looking for something, something worth killing for. You just need to figure out why everyone around Andrew is dying.
She thinks about her talk with Drake. About the money stolen from the Gussins’ company. It’s not out of the bounds of reason to assume that whoever did this was looking for the money—and Andrew himself.
“Hey, Detective?”
It’s one of the crime scene techs, a kid they call K-Swiss because of his love of the sneaker. Kevin is his real name. He gestures for her to follow him and disappears back inside the house.
She catches up to him in the foyer.
“What’s up?”
“I just found this. Thought you might want to see it.” He points to a chair in the dining room that’s been pulled free of the table. Against one of its legs is a blue passport.
“Have you opened it?”
“Yeah. It’s Andrew Locke’s. I put it back into position so you could see how I found it.”
“No kidding? This has all been photographed, right?”
“Yeah. I took multiple shots. You’re clear to move it.”
Theresa picks up the passport and flips to the second page. Andrew Locke’s face stares up at her. Other than the beginnings of a beard, he looks just like he did leaving the airport. It’s current; the issue date for the passport is from last year.
She heaves out a sigh. Oh, Andrew. What have you done?
“Well, that makes things worse, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. Evidence lifted a couple of prints and got a hair off the rope that didn’t belong to the Lockes.”
“How do you know?”
“Blond. They’re both dark haired. Could be the maid.”
Could be the asshole from my kitchen, too. “More people expiring prematurely”—that threat feels different now.
“Be careful with it. I want you to hand carry it to the lab. With all the jurisdictions involved, we can’t run the risk of the evidence being contaminated or going missing. Chain of custody is sacrosanct, okay?”
“Copy that.” He looks over his shoulder at the garage. “Pretty horrible.”
“Yeah. It is. If you need to talk to someone, I’ll arrange it. We’re all going to need counseling after this one.”
When her phone rings an hour later, and she sees Eden’s number, she takes a deep breath and braces herself for the terrible tidings she’s been expecting since the accident. But she is mistaken . . . and this feels like the first break she’s gotten.
“Wonderful news,” Eden trills. “Brooklyn made it through the night. She’s going to be okay.”