Already Taken (Laura Frost FBI)

CHAPTER TWENTY

Laura hopped out of the car almost before the engine had stopped, ready to get this case wrapped up and done with. She had a feeling it was going to take a bit more unraveling than could be done in a single interview, but she also liked the sound of her theory a lot.

A feud between two clans who found themselves actually related after all. One case of spilled blood leading to another in revenge. It didn’t completely explain the matching MOs between each of the victims—but it could, if Keegan Michaels had seen Janae’s body and knew how to mimic the same attack.

“Let me do all the talking,” Laura warned Agent Moore, as they approached the front door of a small home sandwiched close between two others. The building looked like it had once been something bigger—a warehouse, possibly—that had been converted into small and affordable houses. “This is serious. If this is the one, we don’t want to set him off in the wrong way. I’m good at getting people to talk, so let me try and lure him into a confession.”

Agent Moore nodded. “I’ll just try and stay quiet in the background,” she said. There was something shining in her eyes, which made Laura very worried. “I can’t wait to see you in action. I bet this is going to be a masterclass!”

“This isn’t a classroom,” Laura told her, keeping her voice quiet as they approached the door. “This is real life. With real consequences. Got it?”

“Sorry,” Agent Moore whispered, cringing a little under the force of Laura’s rebuke.

Laura squared her shoulders, pushed that all to the back of her mind, and knocked on the door.

In the few moments it took to hear movement inside the house, Laura noted a few things. First among them was that, while the neighbors kept their tiny front yards and facades neat and tidy, this lawn was in heavy need of weeding—and the paint was peeling on the door.

The second thing was the keyhole of the door itself, which was gouged with huge scratch marks all the way around the lock. Before she really had a chance to process the fact that she was certain she knew what that meant, the door was opening, and Laura had to be all business as she looked up at their suspect.

Who was dressed in a stained vest and sweatpants, looked as though he had been woken up by the door, and had large red blooms of broken blood vessels on his cheeks and nose that told Laura her first instinct had been right.

He was an alcoholic.

Laura cleared her throat, trying not to smell the alcohol that wafted from him. “Keegan Michaels?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, nodding and then squinting at her. “Are you investigating Janae’s death?”

Laura glanced surreptitiously at Agent Moore, internally begging her not to give the game away. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry, can I just check—what was your relationship to her?”

“I’m her cousin,” Keegan said, scratching his chest. He was probably in his thirties, though he had signs of aging that seemed as though they might be premature: wrinkles that were deeper on his forehead than anywhere else, faint gray hairs scattered throughout the untidy mess of brown strands on his head.

“Right.” Laura nodded. “That’s right. We’re talking to her cousins, just to see if we can get any extra information to help us in the case. Can we come in?”

Keegan glanced up and down the street as if checking to see who was watching. “Fine,” he said, after a moment, turning to lead them back into the dim interior of the house.

Laura took a deep breath, fearing it was going to be the last one she dared to take, and stepped inside.

The hallway was not immediately offensive. It was only when they followed Keegan into his living room that the smell arose. Stale alcohol, sweat, and rotten food. Laura had to clench her fists to stop herself from wanting to throw up or run out of the room.

There were several bottles sitting or lying on the table and the couch, and scattered across the floor. Some of them probably had a drop or two left in them. Laura clenched her fists so hard she felt her fingernails biting into her skin. She couldn’t allow this to be temptation. She was here on a case. She had to be serious.

“Take a seat,” Keegan said, dubiously gesturing to the single armchair with a broken side-rest and the couch, which he immediately flopped down onto, taking up all of the cushions.

He was a mess. Amongst the empty bottles were empty takeout boxes and plates still crusted with old food. The curtains were closed, and Laura could easily see that he had been sleeping on the couch—probably passing out in a drunken stupor and not bothering to get up again. There was far more than three days’ worth of debris here. Whatever this was, it wasn’t new. It hadn’t been triggered by Janae’s death.

“How have you been coping with your cousin’s death?” Laura asked, a question that was supposed to be polite. An oblique way of getting at the real question she wanted to ask.

“This isn’t because of Janae,” Keegan said bluntly, waving a hand toward the mess. “I’m an alcoholic. Have been for a while. It’s not because of her.”

“Right,” Laura said. At least that was taken care of. She glanced around again, but decided to remain standing. It was the best position to be in if she needed to run out of here. “Well. In that case, I’d like to ask you about your relationship with Janae, all the same. Were you close?”

Keegan shrugged and rubbed a hand over his face. “Used to be,” he said. “When she was born, I was already a teenager. It was exciting, having a new baby cousin. I used to babysit for pocket money and stuff. Anyway, she grew up.”

“I imagine that you were still very upset to learn that she had died,” Laura said.

“Yeah,” Keegan said, with another shrug. He looked tired. Bleary-eyed. The hand that passed over his face the second time was shaking. He needed a fix. She knew the signs well enough from having experienced them herself. “It was sad. It is sad. I guess I’m still processing it.”

“It didn’t make you angry?” Laura asked.

“What?”

Laura paused, changed tack. She didn’t want him getting his back up too quickly. “Were you at the ancestors reunion that she attended last month? I gather you would have been invited, since you were related.”

“Yes, I went,” Keegan said, frowning slightly. “Made an ass out of myself, as usual.”

He was making this far too easy for her. “How so?”

Keegan sighed, gestured around at the bottles as if that explained everything. “Got into a fight. Well, kind of. Screamed at him. What kind of loser lets themselves get into so much of a state, they become an alcoholic?” he asked, shaking his head miserably.

Laura said nothing, forcing a polite smile onto her face. In her pocket, she ran her fingers over the chip she always carried to remind her of how far she’d come.

She couldn’t let his words, though they cut deep, derail this interview. He didn’t even know he was talking to a fellow alcoholic. He was talking about himself, not about her.

“Can you tell me exactly what happened, and why?” Laura asked. “This could be very important to our investigation.”

He cast a sideways look at her. “I doubt that.”

“Let me be the judge,” Laura insisted.

Keegan sighed and took a breath. Laura recognized in him an emotion she’d borne herself: the knowledge that you had to tell a story of the shameful thing you had done when drunk. “I used to have a wife, before all this. Or maybe it wasn’t before. I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to tell when the drinking became a problem and whether it was before or after she left.”

“She left you?” Laura asked. She wanted clarification to be sure that it was a case of a marriage breaking up, and not a death.

“Yeah, she decided to shack up with this guy from work that she’d been sleeping with,” Keegan said, his shoulders slumping even further at the memory. “Turns out they’d been doing it for months. So, they ended up living together, and I was on my own, so I couldn’t afford the house anymore. I ended up having to move here because it was the only place I could afford that was on the market and close enough to work. Which I ended up getting fired from, anyway, so here we are.”

Laura nodded impatiently. “So, getting back to what happened at the reunion?”

“Right.” Keegan’s hand twitched toward one of the bottles on the table as if he wanted to check whether there was anything in it, but then he looked away. It looked empty anyway. “I thought the reunion might be a chance to get a bit of a fresh start, you know? Maybe meet some relatives I didn’t know I had, cheer me up about being on my own these days. Only, I walk around the corner, and who do I see? My wife and her new man, just standing there arm in arm like butter wouldn’t melt.”

Agent Moore let out a low whistle. Laura and Keegan both swiveled to look at her; she had been so quiet until then that Laura had actually forgotten she was in the room. She looked guilty at the interruption, shrinking under both of their gazes.

“I couldn’t help myself.” Keegan shrugged. “I’d already had a few drinks to give me some courage before I went to the convention hall, you know? I didn’t have it in me to hold back. I went for him. Started yelling about how he stole my woman, and she was just standing there all embarrassed, giving me that look like she used to when I did something to show her up in public.”

Laura couldn’t help but wince. She felt like she could relate. After all, she’d done plenty to make an idiot out of herself back when things were really bad. Even Nate had looked at her like that once. And she’d like to say that that had been the catalyst that made her stop drinking—but it hadn’t been. Not by a long shot.

“What was said?” Laura asked. She wanted him to tell her, himself, about the threats.

“I threatened to kill him,” Keegan said, then burst out into self-pitying laughter. “Can you imagine? I can barely walk around, the shakes are so bad if I don’t drink. And when I do drink, I can barely walk in a straight line anyway. Me, trying to kill someone? I’d probably just end up hurting myself.”

He was doing a pretty good job of making himself seem innocent, even though he was also doing a pretty good job of confessing everything. He had a good point about his abilities—but that wasn’t enough to rule him out fully, not to be absolutely certain about it.