Already Dead (Laura Frost FBI)

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Laura sat at her desk in the precinct, holding her head in her hands, trying hard to think.

She’d had to yell at the last remaining cops who were still in the precinct until they were all on duty. Even their Chief had seemed reluctant to make them follow the orders. They were all casual and careless now, thinking they already had the right man in custody. The rumor mill together with the obviousness of a priest being obsessed with candles had done it for the  Pastor’s reputation, until it seemed like everyone just assumed they were going to get a confession sooner rather than later and put this whole business to bed.

All of which, frankly, terrified her. Not only were they complacent, but they were going to be looking for signs to reinforce their impression of his guilt as well. That could mean people ignoring evidence to the contrary. And with slip-ups like this Officer Frank never actually telling anyone from the FBI about the rumors he’d heard already happening, Laura felt like she was no longer able to trust anyone but herself in this investigation.

She didn’t even know where Agent Won was.

Not that she particularly wanted to know. She was sure he was only chasing down his own harebrained theories, getting himself into trouble, and doing things she would be forced to reprimand him for. That was a headache she could do without.

But the headache she did have was one that she couldn’t figure out how to get rid of. How to track down this killer. How to make sure that they did have the right man, even though she wasn’t at all convinced they did.

She put her hands into the pocket of her jacket, slumping into her chair, and almost immediately a headache stabbed her in the temple. What was that for? Was that a normal, stress-related headache? Or was it a vision? She hadn’t touched any-

Laura was staring into the flames. And she knew, now, exactly what she was looking at. The row of candles set up in the memorial stand in the church, several of them blazing, just as it had looked when she had left the church. Well, maybe not exactly. She hadn’t memorized which ones were burning and which weren’t.

But she knew where she was now. She was at the church.

As she watched, all of the flames went out suddenly, like they had been snuffed, plunging her vision into darkness and leaving no flames remaining. Only gray smoke trailed upwards, the only thing she could make out besides the pale white trunks of the candles, still standing in place.

She had seen the candle snuffer at the church, a metal tool designed for the purpose. But that wasn’t this. This was something else.

This was all of the flames gone at once, with nothing moving between her and the flames.

What had snuffed them out? A sudden breeze? A gust? Someone blowing them out on purpose?

Laura came back to herself and the computer screen in front of her, a screensaver bobbing around on the monitor irritatingly. It reminded her that she was getting nowhere.

Except, maybe she was now. She’d seen the church. She knew where the candles were. None of which made much sense, unless the vision was trying to tell her that she did have the right person, and the church had been the place to look all along.

But then why would she still be seeing the candles, if they had nothing to do with the killer?

And what had triggered the vision, anyway? Laura knew that she wouldn’t normally get any vision at all unless she was somehow in contact with something that would connect her to either the killer or the victim in some way. A hand on the gun that she was going to have to point at the suspect. A finger trailed along the wall of a house where the girl had been hidden away out of sight. A touch of the coffee machine that made the coffee that the stranger was going to spill when he walked back to his desk.

So, what was it this time, while she was sitting here with her hands in her pockets, touching nothing?

Maybe not nothing. Laura dug her fingers deeper into her pockets and found the crinkling cold plastic of an evidence bag, placed there earlier and forgotten about. She dug it out and found the strange burnt twig she had picked up at the last crime scene, next to Cici Powers’s body.

She looked at it now in the light of the precinct, instead of a dark parking lot, and realized what she was actually looking at.

A match.

It was a match.

How could she have missed this before?

Laura studied it closely, bringing the plastic right to her face. It was so stubby and small, and burnt down completely, that she doubted it would have any evidential value in terms of fingerprints or DNA. The spot where the killer had held it, while using it to light the candle, had been passed over by the flame after he’d dropped it.

But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be useful. It was a small, thin match, the kind you bought in an individual matchbox or grabbed from a bar – cheap and nasty, and not very official. The matches she had seen  Pastor Williams using at the church were a completely different make: long and thick, specifically designed for an environment where you might want to light multiple candles one after another.

Of course, that didn’t mean  Pastor Williams was exonerated by the match. It was, after all, more than possible for a person to use two types of matches. There was hardly a law against that.

But the vision had come back. Like someone was going to be blowing out those candles still. And the  Pastor was in custody now. Of course, since these days her visions seemed to be breaking all the rules, it was possible she just didn’t understand what she was seeing – but that didn’t seem right.

None of it felt right.

Laura was used to following her gut. She believed in her gut. And she felt like she’d got the place right. The vision had shown her the church – she knew that now.

But what if it had led her to the wrong person?

There was only one way to be sure. She grabbed her cell phone and dialed Agent Won’s number, listening to it ring out with an exasperated sigh. It hit voicemail, and she grabbed the keys to the rental car as well as her jacket as she walked out while leaving a message. “Agent Won, it’s Agent Frost. I’ve brought in the  Pastor from the church, though I think he’s innocent. But he’s given me a pretty good idea. I think the person we’re looking for is connected to the church – in some other way. I’m going back there now. It’s the one up by the cliff. I don’t know what you’re doing, but if you get this, come and join me. If we still haven’t got the killer, that means he could be out there right now – and it’s up to us to stop him.”

She ended the message, striding out into the parking lot and back to the car, feeling at last like she might be on the right path.

She just hoped she wasn’t far, far too late.

***

It was eerie, going back into the church on her own. Laura couldn’t explain it, exactly, but there was something odd about it. Maybe it was the fact that she knew it was empty – or at least, that it was supposed to be empty. Having left the  Pastor back at the precinct, it was like walking into his house without permission.

No, she realized; he lived here. This was exactly like walking into his house without permission, because she was. And maybe that shouldn’t have concerned her as much as it did, given that she was an FBI agent. But normally she entered someone’s home unannounced only for one reason: because she thought they were in danger, or were a danger themselves, and she had to take action.

But the church was very different. Laura walked in without her gun drawn, though she kept a hand close to her hip, ready. It was cold inside; the door swung open easily at her touch, and she realized that they hadn’t quite fully shut it when she’d taken  Pastor Williams away earlier. The old building seemed drafty at the best of times, but now in the middle of winter and with the door left ajar, it was freezing inside.

Still, the candles had withstood whatever breeze had come through. They flickered a few times as Laura approached them once more, her footsteps seeming strangely loud on the wooden floorboards. They were all still lit, still burning strong, just as they had left them.

No… weren’t there more of them lit, now? Laura could swear it. Before, it had only been a few scattered flames, plus the three that  Pastor Williams had lit. Now it was almost as though the whole rack was blazing, though there were still some gaps.

Pastor Williams hadn’t been there.

Who had lit the candles?

Laura’s heartrate skyrocketed with the realization that the open door meant anyone could have come in. And anyone might expect to be able to come in – after all, it was a church. The P Pastor’s absence might not even have been noticed by anyone who came in to simply pray in peace. With three deaths in the town so recently, it was reasonable to think that people might be coming by the church more often.

Which did very little to reassure her, given that the killer themselves had to be somewhere in the town. And what better way to enjoy the spoils of their actions, all those lovely tears shed by the locals, than from a front row seat?

Laura bit her lip, swinging around and then completing a circle. She scanned every pew, every shadow, her eyes darting past the religious iconography and the furniture and trying to see any sign of someone else’s presence. If the killer had been here – if they were here, now…

She saw nothing. But still, her heart was racing. The vision had shown her the candles being blown out. If it was the killer who did that, then she had to be in the place where he would be. She had no precise way to tell when the vision would come to pass, of course, but it had to be soon. Soon enough that it would be triggered at all.

If he came back, she would be right here, out in the open, with no backup.