He flipped me off. “Fuck off.”
I smiled and patted him lightly on the back. “Now get the fuck out of here and let me enjoy the rest of my day.”
Grudgingly he left, and I couldn’t help but smile at the big brown stain on his ass from where he’d fallen in the dirt.
Served the fucker right for pestering me.
Turning around, I loaded my gun once again and started firing off shots at the piece of paper floating down range.
I was having a damn good time until I got a call, and what I heard made my stomach nearly drop to my feet.***“What’s going on, Luke?” I asked him as we walked, side by side, down the hallway to our conference room.
Luke opened the door and ushered me inside ahead of him.
I came to a stop just past the entrance when I was faced with multiple men in suits.
“What’s going on?” I asked again.
Luke walked past me and had a seat next to Chief Rhodes, who I was surprised to see was also in attendance.
“Take a seat, Perez. We have some things to discuss with you. Nothing you did wrong, though, so stop looking at me like that,” The Chief grumbled.
Smiling slightly, I walked to the chair on the other side of the chief and took a seat, leaning back in my chair and crossing my arms over my chest.
The chief pushed over a file folder that was nearly an inch thick, and I took that to mean that he wanted me to open it and have a look.
And when I did, I wished I’d at least braced myself first.
“Goddammit, chief. Fuck you,” I said, pushing the file away from me and closing my eyes to control my urge to vomit.
“He’ll do,” the man I sat across from said.
He was in his early fifties and had brown hair peppered with gray throughout.
He was a thin man, and probably didn’t reach much over five and a half feet tall.
The other man at his side was burly with black hair and a deep tan. He was in his mid to late thirties with green eyes and a goatee.
I glared at the two of them.
“What the fuck is going on?” I growled.
I hated fucking games.
Just tell me what the fuck is going on already.
“This is Special Agent Troy Palmer, and this,” The Chief said, indicating the black man. “Is Special Agent Dane Elliott. They’re here to speak with you about the Cox case.”
The Cox Case was the murder suicide I’d first responded to.
“Yeah, so?” I asked tiredly.
Hell, was I tired. I was living off of only hours of sleep, and I could really use a few hours of shut eye before I had to deal with them and their shit.
Crime, however, didn’t wait for it to be convenient for all those involved.
Which Agent Palmer explained in the next second.
“We’ve discovered a few similarities in about ten murders throughout the Ark-La-Tex involving cops and their pregnant wives,” Agent Palmer said without preamble.
I blinked. “What?”
He pushed the file back to me, and I looked down at it, only now realizing what I’d thought was the murder I’d walked in on just two days prior wasn’t the one I’d thought it was.
It was a different one.
“Holy shit,” I said, surprised. “Are they all positioned this way?”
It was nearly identical.
The only thing different was the color of the tile floor they were laying on.
“We have reason to believe that you might have seen the man who did this on your way to the scene. We’ve had three witnesses saying they saw a man walking his dog down the street just down the road from the crime scene. Black hoodie. Black jeans. Black dog.”
I thought back to the day I’d driven to the crime scene.
Remembered passing the mobile home park sign, then seeing a black dog off to the side of the road that I passed.
I remembered thinking that the owner needed to get the dog the fuck out of the way when he heard lights and sirens blaring.
“Yeah, I saw him,” I confirmed, thinking back to the man in question. “Black hoodie. Black pants. Red shoe strings in the shoes. Dog had a red collar with black lettering on it. Black lab.”
Agent Elliott took notes on his pad of paper as I spoke.
The other one just watched me closely.
“Any cars in the area?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Actually, no. I passed four houses before I got to theirs and hadn’t seen a single one. The couple had two cars in the driveway as well as a red mid-sized sedan belonging to the elderly couple. I did pass an abandoned car with hazard lights on pointing in the opposite direction I’d been going, but I also saw a man walking away from the car in a white t-shirt and khaki pants.”
The agent nodded. “Good. Thanks.”
“We have reason to believe that the man’s a practicing doctor in the area. Or a nurse. Or a midwife. Possibly a registrar at the hospital. Each woman that’s been killed, their only connection, is them being in the same doctor’s office that practices in the Ark-La-Tex. It’s a large one that has over eight offices and seven doctors serving it. Only four of the doctors travel over the state line, and we’ve made a note of those four in this chart,” Agent Palmer said, sliding the three of us a stack of papers.
I scanned the names on the list as well as the pictures.
I didn’t recognize any of them.
“So what do you need from us?” Chief Rhodes asked bluntly.
They both shook their head, but Palmer was the one to answer.
“Nothing. Not yet anyway. We’ve already been privy to the reports, photos, and crime scene data. We just ask that, if you encounter another one of these, you call us. We’ve been working this case for a little over two years now, and so far we have just as much now as we did then. A bunch of nothing,” he said simply.
I looked down at the papers in front of me, recording the faces of all the four doctors into my memory bank so I’d have it later if I had need of it.