Already Taken (Laura Frost FBI)

CHAPTER SIX

Laura blinked into the mirror behind the driver’s side sun visor, rubbing at the corner of her eye. There was still some gritty sleep there, and it dislodged under her finger, leaving her feeling much better. Not that it made much overall difference. She was still tired as hell.

Thankfully, she was back to normal levels of tired after half a night’s sleep in the cramped and uncomfortably cozy inn, which had so many different handmade rustic blankets on the bed Laura had ended up pushing them all onto the floor. Still, she had to admit, she’d had a marginally better sleep than she did in the usual rock-hard creaking motel beds they got stuck in. That was one of the things you learned quickly as an FBI agent on assignment: how to sleep anywhere, anytime, at a moment’s notice.

“The lights are changing,” Agent Bee Moore chirped up from the passenger side.

Laura snapped the sun visor back up into position, putting her foot back on the accelerator and crossing the intersection. She made no comment—she was sure she would have realized it was time to move when the other car in front of them did. Agent Moore was already far too cheerful and eager for this time of the morning, sleep or no sleep.

Laura had found her waiting outside of her own door, hanging about on the inn’s upstairs landing, when she emerged to head for the sheriff’s office. Apparently, she was very keen to demonstrate that her lateness last night was not going to be a habit.

“Sheriff’s office sent us the direct coordinates of the most recent victim. It’s a farm outside town,” Laura said. The first thing she’d said to Moore since suggesting they go get in the rental car. The town was small enough that they could have walked to see the Sheriff if they were just meeting him there. “We’ll head out there and check out the crime scene first, then to the morgue to look at the bodies.”

“What’s the Sheriff’s name? Will it just be him we’re meeting?” Moore asked. She dug a notebook and pen out of her coat pocket.

“Sheriff Ramsgate, and I don’t know,” Laura told her. She squinted ahead, checking the route against the GPS. They were already heading out of town. It would only take them ten or fifteen minutes to get to the scene, depending on how good the roads were.

“Okay. Is he in charge of the crime scene? Or are we, now? Do we have to make sure it doesn’t get disturbed?”

Laura glanced at her. “They didn’t cover all of this in training?”

Moore flushed slightly. “They did, but it was a lot to take in,” she said. “Besides, I figure being out here on assignment is probably nothing like what they say it is in training, right?”

That much was true, Laura had to admit. “Not in that sense,” she said. “Chain of command is kind of set into the procedures. We’re in charge of everything, but we can usually trust the locals to do an okay job. If I see anything that doesn’t look up to scratch, like civilians wandering around or failure to protect the integrity of the scene, then I’ll step up and give out orders. But we won’t have to do that ourselves. We can ask the Sheriff’s staff to do it, and if he doesn’t have enough, then we draft in reinforcements.”

“Got it,” Moore said, scratching something down in her notebook. Laura hoped it wasn’t verbatim. She’d expected the rookie to be green, but not that green. “So, you’ve been with the FBI a long time, right?”

Laura blinked. She wasn’t that old, was she? “Just about nine years now.”

“Wow,” Moore said. “I hope I’m here for that long! And you have such a great record, too. What’s your secret?”

Laura’s nostrils flared. Just how young was this kid, anyway? She was aware that nine years probably did sound like a long time for someone who’d never committed to anything longer than a high school, but still. All these questions.

“I don’t have a secret,” she said. “I’ve just done the job enough times to know how to do the job.”

Alright, so that wasn’t entirely fair. She actually did have a secret. There was just no question at all that Laura was going to share it. There wasn’t even any point, since it wasn’t as though Agent Moore could use the same technique.

“You must have picked up some tips and tricks along the way,” Agent Moore pressed. “Like, I don’t know. What’s the first thing we should be looking for at the crime scene?”

“Evidence,” Laura said, then thought about it and corrected herself. “No—a body. Look for a body first and then evidence.”

Moore made a pouty kind of sound and looked out the passenger window. Laura was glad. She didn’t want to answer all of these stupid questions. She’d had enough to deal with on her last case with Agent Won, who thought he knew everything and didn’t need her help at all. Now she was paired up with someone who wanted her hand held every step of the way. It was like Rondelle was playing a trick on her.

“They said you were tough to work with, too,” Moore said, almost to herself. “I just thought it was probably because they didn’t like the fact a woman was better at the job than they were.”

There was a note in her voice that made Laura flick her eyes sideways, getting an impression of the side of Moore’s face before she looked back at the road ahead. They were winding through fields now. Not far from the flag marking the spot on the GPS.

Damn. The rookie actually looked up to her, didn’t she?

She was looking for some kind of role model to guide her through the Bureau.

Unfortunately, that just wasn’t something that Laura had the time or the headspace to be. She’d have to think of a way to break it to her gently. Or, failing that, just be her usual prickly and tough to work with self until the girl gave up and started idolizing someone else.

“I think this is it,” Laura said, choosing not to make any comment about what Agent Moore had said. The less dialogue they entered on that part, the better. Even if it wasn’t her favorite thing about the job, Laura had long ago made peace with the fact that everyone else in the FBI, other than Nate, thought she was a freak or a snobbish bitch.

She’d made peace with it through the medium of alcohol, which was no longer an option, but that was beside the point.

They turned off onto a dirt track which led past a few rickety-looking outbuildings before plunging through the field of corn. Off to one side it was possible to see that half the field had been cleared. The rest was still waiting, golden ears waving in the slight breeze, putting Laura in mind of every bad horror movie from the last thirty years. She shuddered slightly, then pushed it out of her head

This wasn’t even her first crime scene in a field of corn. But even if the crop’s reputation for spookiness was justified, there wasn’t any killer out there today. Not with the Sheriff parked outside a large and welcoming farmhouse that appeared as if rising out of the field itself, along with several trucks and heavier farm vehicles left in neat rows in front.

Laura pulled up beside them all, switching off the engine and glancing in the rearview mirror just once before getting out.

“Where is everyone?” Agent Moore wondered out loud, getting out at the same time.

Laura turned in a circle, then pointed. There was a clear disturbance in the wall of corn that faced them on the left-hand side of the track they’d driven down. “I’m guessing we go that way.”

The walk through the corn was eerie. Each time the wind brushed through the stalks, they shivered against one another and made a sound not a million miles away from whispering. Laura was confident, though, that they were in the right place—and when the view changed from an indiscriminate passageway through identical stalks of corn into an open clearing where two men were standing, looking down at the ground and talking in quiet voices, Laura knew she’d been right.

The biggest clue was the fact that one of them was the Sheriff, given his brown uniform.

“Hi,” Laura said, grabbing her badge off her belt to wave it at them. “We just arrived. I’m Special Agent Laura Frost, and this is my partner, Special Agent Bee Moore.”

“Be more what?” the Sheriff asked. He was an older man, probably in his fifties, with graying hair at the sides of a dark short-cropped cut. He had a small paunch right where his belt sat, and he was standing with his thumbs hooked under the belt as if to ease the pressure. He looked like probably more than half of all the sheriffs that Laura had ever met. She guessed the job took a certain type.

Laura wanted to wince at the pun he’d made of Moore’s name, but when she turned to look to her side, the rookie was grinning. “Anything I want,” she said. “My parents wanted me to know I could always just ‘be more.’”

Huh. Apparently, she was serious—and she didn’t even look angry about it.

“Sheriff Ramsgate, I’m guessing?” Laura asked, trying to get the conversation back on track. She was sure that Agent Moore had a very interesting backstory, from the small snippet she’d already heard. But Laura had already expended enough energy on the last partner who only stuck around for one case. If Agent Moore came back for a second, then maybe she would find the time to try to care.

“That’s right,” the Sheriff said, reaching up to touch the brim of his hat almost as a kind of reflex. “This here is Ike Brown, the owner of the property. He’s also the one who found the body and called it in.”

Laura nodded, turning her attention to the ground before them. There was a section which had been trampled down close around where they stood, and quite clearly an actual crime scene which started after that. Someone from the Sheriff’s team, quite possibly the man himself, had erected a small scrap of tape between two metal spikes in front of the blood-spattered area, as if protecting an exhibit at a museum. “This is where the body was found?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ike spoke up. “I found it last night. We had a clear night, no rain, so it’s all intact.”

Laura was already nodding. “This cordon is nowhere near good enough,” she said. “Sheriff, I’m going to need this whole section of field protected. We’ve probably lost a lot of potential forensic evidence already, but we’ll do what we can to save it. Come on—none of us should be this close to the site right now, given that it hasn’t been properly processed.”

Sheriff Ramsgate bristled as she turned. She could see it in him. Righteous indignation. He thought he knew how to do his job. The trouble was, she was already well aware that he hadn’t dealt with a crime on this scale before.

“Tell me about the victim,” she continued, starting to lead him away. The best way to do it was just to cut him off, get him talking about something else, so he wouldn’t have the time to voice his anger. He was just going to have to deal with being given orders. Most sheriffs weren’t used to it—usually being the ones giving the orders—but he was the one who needed the help of the FBI, so he was going to have to accept the form that it came in.

“He’s a local man, James Bluton,” Ramsgate said after a moment, falling into step behind her as Laura had known he would have to. Behind him, Ike and Agent Moore brought up the back of the party, following them out of the channel through the corn. “He’s in his thirties. A family man. His wife was out of town visiting family, but we’ve notified her and she’s on her way back here now.”

“How far away?” Laura asked.

“What?”

“The wife.”

“Oh—more than a few hours,” Ramsgate said, making a shrugging gesture. “I’m not real sure on the location. Just know it was far enough she decided to stay there a few days instead of traveling right back.”

Laura nodded. They would have to get someone to follow that up. Speak to the relatives and make sure the wife had been there the whole time. It was so often something to do with the spouse. Even though violent murders of this nature were very rarely committed by women, they had to be sure.

“What was he like?” Laura asked. “It’s a small town—I guess you probably knew him.”

Ramsgate nodded out of the corner of her eye as they emerged back onto the dirt track that they had driven in on. Out in front of the farmhouse, a woman who looked to be about Ike’s age—probably in her sixties or so—was setting out what looked like a pot of tea and some empty mugs on a table on the porch. “I knew him to see around,” Sheriff Ramsgate said. “He owns the farm on the adjacent land here. Ike’s the one who knew him better.”

Ike nodded when Laura looked at him over her shoulder. He was pale-faced, like he still wasn’t over the discovery. She didn’t blame him. This was the one that had been facedown—she’d been able to tell from the blood spilled over the earth and the trampled corn stalks at the scene. He’d only seen the cut throat. But that, she was sure, would easily have been enough.

“Alright, Ike,” Laura said, taking the cue from the Sheriff and using his first name. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll sit down on that porch of yours—that’s your wife, is it?”

Ike nodded. “Yes, ma’am, that’s my Pat.”