Already Taken (Laura Frost FBI)

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

“Show me the pages of our victims again,” Laura said. “Let’s start with the first one—Janae Michaels.”

Alice nodded and flipped back through the pages, muttering to herself quietly until she found it again. “Here.”

“Right.” Laura nodded. She looked up at the top of the page. There was a notation next to the male family member who had fathered the children to start off this particular part of the tree: see page 82. “Now to page eighty-two.”

This page had a notation at the top to turn to page 113. Laura nodded for her to do it, and—

“There!” Laura stopped her, excited now, tapping the page they had turned to. It was familiar enough. There, right in the middle of the page, was the man who had done it all. The killer.

And the line of descendancy went right from him through the next two pages and down to Janae Michaels.

“Now James Bluton,” Laura said. She thought she already knew what they were going to see, but she needed to have it confirmed. She needed to be sure.

Alice traced it back over the page, and then—“Turn to page one hundred thirteen,” she read aloud, looking up at Laura.

Laura nodded grimly. “What about this line?” she asked. “It goes up from Maria—but she shouldn’t be on the chart connected to anyone else, should she?”

Alice made a face. “Eight generations in one small area is a long time. You might be surprised.” She followed the notation to turn to page 128 from Maria’s name, the line having nowhere else to go without intersecting with James’s family’s line, and then nodded. “Yes, here we are. She was a distant cousin of her husband’s. So very distantly that it hardly mattered at all, however.”

Laura chewed this information over.

“And Hank Gregory?”

He was an older man, and his position in the tree was higher than the other two. But the trace through his forefathers led them to the same spot.

Page 113.

“Ebediah Michaels,” Laura said. “Our massacre killer was the ancestor of all three of our new victims. This is it. This is the link.” She slapped her hand on the side of the table victoriously, looking around to grin at Alice and Agent Moore—both of whom seemed to share her enthusiasm.

They’d done it.

They’d found their link, and it was a link that explained everything. A massacre that happened two centuries ago might not seem recent enough to warrant deaths today, but there were generational feuds that had lasted for as long. Families who had long lived and interbred in a certain part of the country, whose opponents had done the same. This being technically all part of the same family was another issue, but it was clear that more branches had survived than the one that was wiped out.

Even in the same moment of elation at the fact that she had worked it out, Laura felt her heart drop again.

“But aren’t there thousands of people alive today from the same bloodline?” Agent Moore said, speaking Laura’s disappointment out loud. “More even than went to the reunion! How are we supposed to know who could be a target, or who the killer is?”

“We can’t,” Laura said, crestfallen. She pressed her fingertips against her temple, trying to think. “Any one of the people who are descended from the same family could be at risk. So far, we only have victims who were both descended exactly from Ebediah Michaels and at the reunion, but that doesn’t necessarily mean only people in those categories are at risk here. Even if they were… how many are left alive?”

Alice flipped the pages quickly. From Ebediah Michaels and his wife, an uncomfortably large number of progeny shot down the page, their lines connecting to more children and more. Alice worked fast, counting. “Sixteen,” she said. “There are twenty-one living descendants of Ebediah Michaels. No, wait—twenty-two. I forgot to count a grandfather, there.”

“Definitely still alive?” Laura asked.

“When I went to print, which was just before the convention last month.” Alice nodded. “I haven’t heard on the grapevine of any deaths other than the three we know about.”

Laura rubbed a hand over her mouth, considering it. “Twenty-two. It’s too many. Even considering that many of them will be in the same households…”

“Eight family groups,” Alice supplied helpfully.

“Even then,” Laura continued, “we’ve got, what? Two deputies who are so busy we haven’t even seen them, the Sheriff, the other deputy who seems a little past his best, and us. Six people. We could try to draft in reinforcements from nearby areas, but even if we do—to offer the best protection there should really be two officers at each site, and the two of us should be focusing on investigating, not sitting out front of a house all night long…”

“We don’t have the manpower,” Agent Moore sighed. “You know, Ms. Papadopoli, it’s not like what you see on the TV at all. There’s no budget for anything and you have to do it all yourself.”

Alice nodded sagely, which seemed to brighten Agent Moore’s day.

“We can’t protect all the people we need to protect,” Laura said grimly. “We can warn them, if we can get hold of them. The best course of action would be to figure out where the killer is going to strike next and intercept him, stop him from attacking. But I don’t know how he’s choosing who to go after. It might just be based on who is easiest to get to, in which case he’ll just attack whoever we don’t manage to protect.”

“Well,” Agent Moore said, but hesitantly, as if she wasn’t sure whether she was about to get told off for speaking up. “Instead of protecting the potential victims, what if…”

“Go on,” Laura prompted, when she didn’t finish the sentence.

Agent Moore blushed and fidgeted. “It might be nothing. But what if we try to find the killer instead?”

“I would love to find the killer,” Laura said, spreading her hands open in front of herself. “I just don’t have enough leads to go on. That’s why I’m suggesting protecting the victims. If I could figure out who the killer is, he would already be in handcuffs.”

“Right,” Agent Moore said, shaking her head and looking down as though she felt stupid. “It’s just… we could maybe look into the descendants of the sole survivor?”

Laura blinked.

The sole female survivor—yes! She went on to have a family of her own, but she would have been deeply scarred by what had happened to her parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, and cousins. That kind of thing could be passed down in legend through a family, from parent to child and to their children after. Or if someone discovered they were related to this killer and blamed them for… what? A perceived lack of wealth or opportunity which might have been granted if their ancestors were allowed to farm in peace?

“That could work,” she said. “Ms. Papadopoli? Do you know who would fit that bill?”

Alice eagerly flipped through her book, back to the page that mapped the tree of their sole survivor. “You know, when I made this book, I was worried it was a vanity project that I would end up never looking at again,” she said, with a slight smile on her face. A look of pride and enjoyment in the tools she was using, rather than glee that someone had had to die for it to happen. “Here we are. Right, there have been seven generations since her. Looks like there are six descendants still alive.”

“That’s a much smaller number to work with,” Laura said. “Their ages? How many are elderly?”

Alice consulted her figures. “Just one,” she said. “A man in his seventies.”

“We can rule him out,” Laura said. “Anything you can tell us about the others?”

Alice nodded quickly, skimming her finger along the page to read the names again. “Three of them are aged between forty and fifty years old,” she said. “Then we have two children of those adults, who are both adults now themselves. There were a couple more, actually, but there have been some deaths prior to all of this happening. If I remember from my research, it was… one car crash, and… yes, I think she was the poor child who died of leukemia.”

“The living members—anything about them?” Laura asked. “Any of them have a dark past, history of mental illness, anything you’ve heard on the grapevine or while doing your research…?”

Alice hummed low, looking troubled. “I don’t know if I should say it,” she said. “I don’t like to get someone in trouble if it turns out they aren’t connected to all of this at all.”

“You won’t get them in trouble,” Laura said. “You’re just helping us join the dots quicker. We’ll find out who is doing all of this eventually—let’s do it now, before anyone else has to die.”

That seemed to help Alice make up her mind. “Alright.” she nodded. “There was a man—one of the older generation, I think he’s in his mid-forties now. He doesn’t have children of his own. Allan McLean. I don’t really know too much about him, because we’ve never met.”

“He didn’t attend the reunion?” Agent Moore asked, sounding flabbergasted that anyone would choose to do such a thing.

“He wasn’t invited,” Alice said, making a guilty expression. “You see, the thing is, I didn’t want to make trouble by inviting someone who had a criminal record.”

That got Laura sitting bolt upright in her chair. “What kind of record?”

“Um,” Alice said, tapping her fingers against her mouth fretfully. “Well, you see, I believe it was… some kind of violent act that got him some time in prison.”

Laura almost exploded out of her chair. That sounded like a likely lead if ever she’d heard one. “Alice, I’m going to need you to give me all the information you collected on this man. Including his address, if you managed to find that at all. Agent Moore, head back to the car now—on the way, make a call to the Sheriff. We need him and his deputies making calls to all twenty-two of the at-risk victims. When you’ve done that, ask the Sheriff to look up Allan McLean and his record. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Agent Moore replied, jumping up and rushing out into the hall as Alice turned to start printing pages of information from her computer.

They had him. And this time, Laura wasn’t going to give him the chance to get away and target someone else.