Already Dead (Laura Frost FBI)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Laura slouched in the chair she had been given, trying to rest her lower back. There was nothing like a long flight and a long day on a case to give you an ache that wouldn’t stop.

“Where else do we look?” Agent Won asked. He was back to being grumbly, acting like he couldn’t sit still. The boy obviously wanted to shoot off and take action on some other front. Not for the first time and almost certainly not for the last, Laura missed Nate with a deep-seated ache in her chest. If he was here, he would be thinking of ways to attack the problem alongside her, not waiting for her lead.

“Check over the employee records,” Laura suggested. She had little hope it would yield anything else, if the locals had already looked, but it was something for Agent Won to do. “Maybe look for something that isn’t obvious. Someone missing work when they were supposed to be in over the last few days, for example, or being late for their shift. Or leaving early. Even someone who booked an off holiday. Those kinds of things.”

“Okay,” Agent Won sighed, with a tone in his voice that suggested he wasn’t as fooled by her attempt to keep him busy as she’d hoped he would be.

She could worry about whether she was hurting his feelings later. Right now, she needed to put her own thinking cap on and figure this out. The candle factory was a bust, it seemed – Toby Martins had been processed and was under arrest for a number of drug and theft charges, but that had nothing to do with their case. It might have been exciting for the locals, who didn’t see much of those types of cases, but their excitement was short-lived too. There was a kind of pall hanging over the small office – too small to even call it a bullpen – where Laura and Agent Won had been allowed to set up shop.

Laura tried to think, knitting her brows together. The candle. What did the candle mean? She knew it had to have something to do with her vision. What did the placement in public spaces mean? There had to be a meaning behind it, something that Laura hadn’t grasped yet. Exhibition? Or care?

The blood, too – the blood had to go somewhere, because the throats were clearly cut at a different location. And what about the fact he had knocked them out first? That had to be a link they could follow, tracking down who had purchased large quantities of the drug required. Then again, Toby Martins had just effectively demonstrated that the drug trade in Pacific Cove wasn’t exactly under control. Maybe that, too, would be hard to trace.

She had to start somewhere. Laura took a breath, ultimately deciding on –

A sharp crackle cut through the air, a dispatch radio on a desk lighting up and blaring out a message.

“All units, all units, we have a ten-one-hundred. Parking lot by the gas station on Ocean View Boulevard. Please respond.”

Ten-one-hundred. Laura knew that code.

A dead body had been found.

It was like the feeling of a train slamming into her at full speed. Another body. Another failure. They’d let someone down in the worst possible way tonight. Laura closed her eyes only for a moment, because a moment was all she had before they had to get moving.

“Won,” she hissed, leaping out of her chair and grabbing his arm to make him follow. He dropped his paperwork in a rush as Laura nodded at Detective Waters and his partner, indicating for them to come along with. They would need a guide. Someone to take them to the scene as quickly as possible. Following a police car with its lights and siren blaring would help immensely with that.

But no matter how quickly they got there, Laura knew: they’d run out of time. They’d failed. The killer had struck again, and they hadn’t been able to stop him.

***

It was dark still as they descended on the scene, casting the parking lot in the unnatural red and blue glow of the police lights. There were a couple of civilians huddled at one side, near a parked car; in front of them, unmistakable even in the gloom, was the body.

With the candle still lit.

Laura jumped out of the car practically in the same motion as switching the engine off, and Agent Won was already ahead of her. They raced over, beating Detective Waters and his partner – who seemed reluctant to even approach now. She couldn’t say she blamed them. She was sure it would hit different when you were walking up to see the body of someone you knew. Being an FBI agent had that anonymity to its advantage.

Laura took in the scene as much as she could in the moment, wanting to preserve it in her head. There was one light at the far end of the parking lot, high up and powerful enough to cast just enough glow to be able to see by, though it was a pale kind of seeing. The kind that the moon could provide on clear nights: everything bathed in a strange monochrome. The body lay on the ground, placed just so, the hair fanned out around the head and the limbs positioned straight. She was holding a candle, like the others. It had been long enough for some drops of wax to run down the side of the candle and onto her hands. Her eyes were closed, as though she was only sleeping.

Laura had to admit there was a strange kind of beauty to the scene. A peace. The body looked as though it was meant to be here, even if it was totally incongruous in the middle of a parking lot. Laura got down onto her knees beside the body, ducking her head to examine it as much as she could. Was there any sign here? Anything that she should be seeing? Anything that, so far, she had missed?

“Detective Waters?” she called out. He moved to her side with a slow kind of reverence. He did not seem unhurried, but only solemn in the presence of the body.

He seemed to know what she was asking before she had to voice it more clearly. “I recognize her. It’s Cecilia Powers. She works at the gas station.”

Laura looked up in the direction he was pointing, to see a gas station in the distance. Close enough that she could make out the lights, far enough that she had no hope of reading the signage. It looked like an island in the darkness. Between here and there it was all black, nothing illuminating it at all.

“I want you to do these three things, in order,” she said, keeping her voice calm so he would listen and obey. “First, call the station and get everyone else down here after us. Second, talk to our two witnesses over there and get them to tell you everything they saw. If they saw a person around here at all, you need to come get me so I can hear it for myself. And third, when everyone else arrives, we need a scene of crime established from here all the way back to the gas station. Everything needs locking down and cordoning off – no one crosses this area until we’ve done a thorough search. Got it?”

“Got it,” Detective Waters said. He sounded unbearably sad. He lingered a moment longer. “She was just a normal girl. Lived here for years with her family. I’ve been served by her more times than I can count.”

“I’m sorry, Detective,” Laura said softly. She looked up at him in the gloom. His eyes hadn’t left Cecilia’s face. “Now, please. Do what I’ve asked, and let’s get her some justice – and stop this from happening again.”

That did the trick. Waters moved off, leaving only Won on the other side of the body. He had crouched too, trying to see what he could see.

“Should I blow out the candle?” he asked.

“Yes,” Laura said. “Carefully, though. We don’t want to contaminate any evidence.”

She got back to her feet as he did so. She could already see that this body was just like the other two. They would wait for the report from the coroner to confirm it, of course, but it looked like she had been through the same process: knocked out, throat cut and drained, moved here to be put on display with the candle.

It was ghoulish. But there was something more to it. Something about the way she had been placed. And there was some kind of connection between the three victims so far, too: they had all worked in jobs that allowed them to interact with members of the public, in customer-facing roles. Serving. Was that something? Laura couldn’t tell yet, but it stood out to her. There had to be something here.

“It’s late,” she said. “He’s already struck again, so we can’t save anyone else tonight, and we’re going to have to wait for the coroner’s report to learn anything new from her body. I don’t think we should talk to the family right away, not when they’re going to have to digest this news. And to be honest, I don’t even know how much use they’ll be. It’s becoming clearer that this, whatever it is, isn’t just some personal vendetta against the victims themselves. If it was, we’d have dug something up by now. A rumor, at least.”

“What if people don’t know about the link?” Agent Won asked, standing back up to her level.

“In a small town like this?” Laura scanned the horizon, the darkness, the faint glow in the distance where one or two properties – likely on main street – still had their lights on. “People talk. And we haven’t heard anything. Anyway, my point is, as much as I hate to say it, we need to get some sleep.”

Wasn’t this a turn up for the books? It was normally Nate having to tell Laura not to push herself too far, reminding her that humans need sleep to function and to think properly. Now she was the one doing it. Things were upside down, and she hated it.

“Alright,” Agent Won shrugged, apparently not in any big rush to get back to the case like she would have been in most situations. “I’ll go look up the motel’s address so we can find it on the GPS.”

Laura nodded distantly, letting him go. She took one more look down at Cecilia Powers, who was still lying in that same peaceful position. It was far from peaceful, really, she knew. But there was something about it. Something she couldn’t yet put her finger on.

Laura turned to go, but as she did, something caught her eye. The beams of the car headlights, left on when they’d both parked, were striking the ground nearby; and there was something there. Something small, like a twig of some kind, only about a quarter inch long. Laura stooped to pick it up, bringing it closer to her face in the gloom to examine it – or try to. It was blackened, twisted. She couldn’t see much from it in the darkness, but –

“Agent Frost?” Agent Won called out. “I’ve got the car set up. We can go.”