Chapter Three
Brenda rolled out of her bed and yawned. She sat at the edge for a while, looking at all the files and paper running from the top of her head to the ground.
“Sleep’s a mean woman,” she said out loud.
She checked her clock. It was morning. The quiet, soothing breeze of Palm Island stole in through the open windows. She wasn’t staying close to the beach, but the cool ocean breeze reached her just the same.
In different circumstances, this place would be ideal for relaxation and leisure.
Palm Island had been dangling right underneath the nostrils of the FBI for a while. Its crime rates were disturbing for a quiet, relaxed town. However, it hadn’t deserved their intervention until recently.
When Brenda drove in last week, she remembered feeling like she was walking into an oasis. The town was peaceful, neat, and seemed far less touristy than similar places. It was very easy to imagine the people here growing old together, happy and undisturbed.
But Brenda sensed something else as she drove its streets. There was a quiet fear lying underneath the idyllic surface, like an alligator in a still lagoon,, waiting for the right time to strike. A few glances into the eyes of passers-by and she got it. These weren’t the lives of people who loved the quiet. They were the lives of people buried by timidity and fear.
The FBI has a suspect, multimillionaire Dimitri Stankovich. They suspected strongly that the man wasn’t just an inheritor to a vast fortune left by his father, but that in fact he was the one behind all the disappearances and murders. Brenda was here on Palm Island to find evidence on him. He’d been lurking under the surface all this while, and Brenda was determined to find him.
The clues she got were unrewarding, mostly because the case files were so vague and incomplete. The local police directed her to an investigator named Boyce, who told her that they didn’t have any information beyond what was in the files.
As she prepared for the day, she reminded herself that she had to pay a visit to the mother of one of the murder victims. Mrs. Cumming was a forty-year-old widow who had no one else besides her son. Now he had been taken too, and all that had been found of him was his head.
***
Brenda parked in the driveway of Mrs. Cumming’s Mediterranean home, shrouded by palm trees and smaller shrubs. The house appeared quiet and empty. If not for the cleanliness of its façade, Brenda would have doubted anyone had lived in the house for quite a long time.
Brenda sighed and cast habitual glances around the environment before she pressed the doorbell. She heard the electric bell ring inside. It took two more rings before she heard a response from inside. Brenda stepped back from the door and waited. When Mrs. Cumming opened the door, all she saw was a younger woman in a flannel shirt and denim pants. Brenda preferred to dress down in the field, particularly when she visited victims’ families. She found it took the edge off the conversations.
“Good day,” she greeted. “How can I help you?”
“Good day, ma’am. This is Mrs. Cumming’s place?” Brenda asked.
“Yes. I am Abigail.”
“Good. I’d like to ask you some questions about your son, Tim.”
The expression on Mrs. Cumming’s face darkened. If Brenda had been unarmed, the change of expression on the other woman’s face might have unnerved her.
“Who’re you?” Mrs. Cumming asked. “If you don’t leave here this minute, I’ll be forced to call the police.”
Brenda sighed and pulled her badge from her back pocket.
“I’m Brenda Lawson of the FBI,” she said, flashing her badge in front of the woman.
As expected, the badge worked. The hostile expression on the woman’s face dissolved. Quickly taking its place was a cloud of sorrow and weariness. Brenda could see that the woman really was going through a tough time. Her life was hard already, raising a child on her own. And now, the last time she had seen that child’s face, it was on a severed head. Brenda hoped that she could make this interview as painless as possible for the woman. If she was being realistic, though, she knew the interview was going to be anything but painless. She needed all the details she could get if she wanted to reach the bottom of things.
The living room was dark except for the little beams of light that came in through the small gaps in between the window blinds.
“I’m sorry for the whole look,” Mrs. Cumming said. “Nothing has been the same since Tim left me.”
Mrs. Cumming turned on the lights, throwing the entire place out of darkness. Most of the furniture in the living room had been covered with tarps. Brenda exchanged a glance with Mrs. Cumming.
“You’re leaving town,” she said. It was more a statement than a question. Even if Mrs. Cumming didn’t offer a reply, the fact hung in the air like cobwebs.
“This town has taken everything from me. Except for my own life, it’s left me with nothing.”
“I understand. However, right now, I need to ask you a few questions that’ll aid me in helping your son. This is no longer a local police business. I need to find who’s responsible for your son’s death, and that of others, and bring them to justice.”
Mrs. Cumming studied Brenda for a while.