Already Gone (Laura Frost FBI)

“Hello, Fallow residence.” It only took Laura a moment to place the voice: it was Amy’s mother. So she was awake at this time of day, after all.

“Hello, Mrs. Fallow,” Laura said, trying to keep her voice smoothly respectful. “I hope it’s not too early to call. This is FBI Agent Laura Frost. We met when your daughter was in the hospital.”

“Oh—yes,” Mrs. Fallow said, her voice uncertain. “You were the one who went in and spoke with Amy directly?”

“That’s right,” Laura said. “I’m just doing a quick follow-up to check on you all. How are things? How is Amy coping?”

“Um,” Mrs. Fallow said. She sounded as though she was distracted, almost as if she couldn’t focus on the question. “She’s—I mean, she’s quite fine—yes, I…”

Her voice trailed off, and Laura heard something in the background. She strained to hear, but there was no need; the noise was getting louder, presumably closer to the phone. She recognized what it was. It was a man’s voice, asking who she was talking to.

“Sorry, it’s not a good time,” Mrs. Fallow said, and immediately ended the call.

Laura remained still for a long moment after the call had ended, hearing the flat tone beeping in her ear. A man. It had to be him. Governor Fallow.

His wife was obviously already petrified of him. There was no telling how long it might be before he would start to lay his hands on little Amy.

Laura bit her lip. There was nothing she could do from all the way over here. Shouting in the background of a call wasn’t a good enough reason to send somebody over there to check on the family. Even if she did make that call, it wasn’t Laura’s first time dealing with an abusive spouse. She already knew how immensely likely it was that Mrs. Fallow would just make up some excuse that delivered her husband from all guilt, put the minds of the agents or cops that were sent out at ease, and mark Laura down as interfering and paranoid.

No, she couldn’t do anything right now. But she didn’t want to just wait for it to happen either. There had to be a way to spare Amy from what would happen to her. Maybe if there was an FBI agent visiting regularly, the governor would think twice about using his fists…

She vowed to herself that as soon as she was back in DC, she was going to pay them a visit in person. She would see Amy with her own eyes, check that she was still okay.

First, she had a killer to catch—and she wasn’t going to achieve that sitting around in here. Laura stood and strode back to their office, ready to get back to it.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

“Find anything?” Laura asked, grabbing a chair to pull up beside Nate where he was working.

“Well,” Nate said, dropping his pen for a moment and rubbing his eyes. He looked as though they were on the verge of going square from staring at the screen for so long. “I started with your most recent cases and worked my way back, through the central database. I haven’t found anything just yet. A lot of these guys are still in prison. The ones that aren’t, I was able to check in with their parole officers. Every single one of them is far enough from here that there’s no way they could be involved.”

“Hmm.” Laura leaned over, looking at his notebook. Nate leaned back in his chair to give her an easier view. “What about earlier than this?”

“This is as far back as I’ve gotten,” Nate said, with a touch of grumpiness. Laura glanced at his face, saw how deep the bags under his eyes were, and knew he was just tired. “Do you know how long it took me to work through all of these?”

Laura checked her watch and opened her mouth.

“No, that was not a literal question.” Nate sighed and shook his head. “How far back do you want me to go?”

“A lot further,” Laura said, frowning. “If we’re looking for a criminal who has been released, then we’ll probably get more luck with the cases from earlier in my career, surely? They’ll have done some time already.”

“All right, fine,” Nate said, taking his cursor and scrolling right to the bottom of a long list of Laura’s arrest records. “Let’s see, this is your first…”

“No, not that one,” Laura said, recognizing the name immediately. “I was only assisting. That was my first case. Not him, either. And that one wasn’t even a big deal. Keep going…”

“Are you doing this the thorough and logical way, or are we just going to start checking records at random now?” Nate asked, sounding peeved. “I have a system in place, and it’s very—”

“This one,” Laura said, tapping the screen impatiently. “This one was really angry. Brent Dockhand. Check him out.”

Nate sighed and did as he was told, clicking on the entry and bringing up the details. “All right, so what was this? A sex offender case?”

“He was targeting random women in their homes,” Laura said, thoughtfully. “Breaking in to assault them, or worse. I could see that as an escalation, don’t you think? Assault graduating to murder?”

“I thought we agreed there didn’t seem to be a sexual element to these murders?” Nate frowned. He was typing anyway as he spoke, looking up the man’s details. With him on the sex offenders’ list, it was going to be even easier to track down his current whereabouts.

“It could have changed for some reason,” Laura said. “We can figure out the whys and wherefores later. Is he still inside?”

Nate held his breath while the page loaded, and then blew it out sharply. “No. He’s been released—about six months ago. And his registered address is about forty-five minutes from here.”