Already Taken (Laura Frost FBI)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Back at the Sheriff’s station, Laura opened her emails to find a list of the most suspicious attendees of the reunion. There were a baker’s dozen of them, all with criminal records or suspected involvement that hinted at a dark past. Suspicious enough to warrant following up.

But focusing on these few would mean ignoring all the others—and there were far too many of them to risk missing some pertinent information.

Laura spun the office chair around, facing Agent Moore. “Alright. This is how we’re going to do it,” she said. “I’m going to go out and talk to the people on this list. You’re going to stay here.”

“I don’t get to come with you?” Agent Moore asked, pouting. She was like a child being told she couldn’t have a treat. Laura resisted the urge to roll her eyes. The rookie was still young. If Laura was given the chance to sit back and take a backseat on a case, she’d jump at the chance to maybe relax just a tiny bit.

No, that was a lie. She’d insist on being hands-on anyway. With her ability, something that no one else could do, Laura had always felt like she was the only one to carry personal responsibility for each and every case she worked. The buck stopped with her, and she wasn’t going to let a killer go unchecked.

“You’re going to stay here because I have a task I need you to do in the meantime,” Laura said, emphasizing the words heavily to let Agent Moore know that she had overreacted to the news. “You need to start calling your way through everyone else on this list. Get the basic questions answered: did they see anything suspicious or recall any kind of disturbance or argument? Did they know any of the victims or see them at the event? Have they noticed anything suspicious themselves at home? If you think they sound suspicious, get them to give you an alibi. Just bear in mind we don’t have the manpower or resources to check out the alibis for all of them, so unless we have a good reason to suspect someone, their info will probably just need to sit on file.”

“Right,” Agent Moore said. “Um. How will I know if they’re suspicious enough?”

Laura took a breath. “Okay, ask them all for alibis, but make a special note if you have reason to think they aren’t telling the truth. How’s that? Oh, and make sure you do write down all of the information they give you.”

“Got it,” Agent Moore said. Then she did something unexpected: she beamed. “I’m going to talk to so many new people today!”

“Yes, you are,” Laura agreed, with a sinking feeling that she tried hard to ignore. The rookie was going to be fine, right? She wasn’t going to waste time with idle conversation and only manage to get through three calls by the time Laura was back… right? “Just keep it short and do as many as you can. We’re going to be doing this until we get another lead, so the faster you get to the next name, the better.”

“Got it, boss,” Agent Moore said with a grin.

“You know,” Laura started, intending to say that she wasn’t Agent Moore’s boss. Not really. They were partners. But then she got a look at the rookie’s earnest face, and decided against it. No one needed her to get a sudden sense of autonomy. “I probably won’t be back for lunch. So just go ahead without me.”

“Sure!” Agent Moore called back, as Laura gathered her things and started to leave. “Just make sure you get something to eat, or you’ll end up irritable and tired!”

Laura simply waved over her shoulder without looking back as she headed on to the first address the FBI techs had given her.

***

Seven interviews later, Laura got back into the hire car and sighed, shoving her hands back over her blonde hair and smoothing some of it back into the neat ponytail it had been this morning. What she really felt like doing was ripping the hair tie out and throwing it into the back of the car. Or possibly out the window. Anywhere, really, where she could throw it hard enough to sufficiently vent her frustration.

She just wasn’t getting anywhere. So much driving around, running from one side of the county to the other, and she felt like she’d had a different story from every single person she’d spoken to. She grabbed her phone and called Agent Moore’s number, waiting for it to connect.

“Hi, Agent Frost!” she enthused, sounding just as bright and bubbly as she had when Laura had left her this morning. “You just caught me between calls. That was lucky! Did you find something?”

“Not exactly,” Laura sighed. “I’m getting a lot of conflicting opinions on how well the reunion went.”

“What do you mean?” Agent Moore asked.

“Well,” Laura said, rubbing a hand across her temple to try and ease some of the stress she felt. “Let’s see. The first person I spoke to said that the reunion was the most exciting event they’ve ever been to in their lives, everyone had such a great time, it was a complete love fest, and she couldn’t imagine anyone ever having any problem with one another since everyone was seemingly part of a big old perfect family they didn’t even know about until that weekend. Oh, and she hasn’t even been tempted to do any crimes since then, thanks to all the lovely goodwill that was spread around.”

“Aww,” Agent Moore started.

“But then,” Laura continued, cutting off whatever she had been about to say, “the next person I spoke to said that it was the most boring thing he had ever been to and he wishes he’d never gone. He swore at me and called me some pretty misogynistic names when I tried to get an alibi from him and then yelled at me until I left his apartment, and then I had to call up his parole officer to find out he was actually at a parole check-in at the time of one of our murders anyway.”

“Oh,” Agent Moore replied. “Well. At least you didn’t have to go back in with backup?”

“Yes, there is that.” Laura shook her head in frustration. “But that was just the first two people. Every single one of them had a different version of events. Anyway. I thought I’d call because I actually did get something that might be useful from my last visit. I didn’t really have anything useful until this one—some of them just made friends and enjoyed it, others thought it was dull and went home early. But this witness, who does have an alibi for the last two days, said that he witnessed someone making a big scene in front of a few dozen other people.”

“A big scene?” Agent Moore paused. “I had a witness statement, actually…”

“Yes?” Laura prompted. “What did you hear?”

“One of my people from the list said that she saw someone yelling a lot and getting in someone’s face,” Agent Moore explained. “She didn’t know what they were fighting about because she missed the start of the argument, but when she got closer she saw they were really going for it. She thought there was going to be physical violence, but then one of them walked away when his wife tugged on his arm and begged him to stop.”

“That tallies pretty well with what I was just told,” Laura said, sitting straighter. “In my witness’s story, this man rushed over toward someone he already knew and demanded to know what he was doing there. When he said that he had been invited because he was related to the ancestors, and the first man realized that meant they were related, he lost it. The witness turned and rushed off to another part of the convention hall—he’s been in trouble a lot but he’s doing anger management classes now, and he didn’t want to get caught up in something if it all kicked off.”

“That’s something, right?” Agent Moore asked. “And I did speak to the next person I called about it to see if they witnessed something. Well, the list is alphabetical, so it turns out that the next person was the brother of the woman I’d just spoken to. He saw the fight as well. He thinks he heard the first guy saying he was going to kill the second one.”

“That’s definitely something,” Laura said. She was starting to feel some excitement. If there was something to this lead, then she was already starting to connect things and make assumptions in her head. There were two males involved, so perhaps the man who had been threatened was either James Bluton or Hank Gregory. And if they weren’t involved in the fight directly, maybe this whole thing had stirred up an old rivalry between two groups who had reason to want one another harmed. There had been stranger disputes between neighbors, after all. “Do we have an ID on this angry, shouting man?”

“Yes,” Agent Moore told her excitedly. “Both of my witnesses recognized the man who was shouting. He was one of their neighbors here, on a farmstead outside of town. They said he moved, though, so they don’t know where he is now.”

“There’s one easy way to check,” Laura said. “Do you have him on the attendance list?”

There was a long pause. Agent Moore was making a quiet noise, as though she was muttering to herself under her breath as she checked over the names. “Yes!” she exclaimed after a moment. “Yes, he’s on here.”

“And his address?”

“Yes!” Agent Moore said, sounding as though she’d just won the lottery. “It’s right here in town!”

“Alright,” Laura said. “Get yourself outside the station. I’ll swing by and pick you up—I’m fifteen minutes away. Then we’re going to talk to this man. What’s his name?”

“Keegan Michaels.”

“Michaels,” Laura repeated. Just like their first victim.

This lead was getting more interesting by the minute.