Before He Takes

When Mackenzie was done, she handed the folder back to Ellington. She looked past him and to the window beyond where white tufts of clouds were drifting by. She closed her eyes for just a moment and took herself back there, not to Iowa but to neighboring Nebraska. A place where there was open land and towering woods rather than mangled traffic and tall buildings. She didn’t really miss it but found that the idea of returning to it, even for work, was exciting in a way she did not fully understand.

“White?”

She opened her eyes at the sound of her name. She turned to Ellington, a little embarrassed that he had caught her zoning out. “Yeah?”

“You sort of went blank there for a minute. You okay?”

“I am,” she said.

And the hell of it was that she was okay. The first six hours of the day had been physically and emotionally draining, but now that she was sitting down, suspended in the air and with an unlikely temporary partner, she felt okay.

“Let me ask you something,” Mackenzie said.

“Shoot.”

“Did you put in a request to work with me on this?”

Ellington didn’t answer right away. She could see the cogs turning behind his eyes before he replied and wondered why he might have any reason to lie to her.

“Well, I heard about the case and, as you know, I have a working relationship with the field office in Omaha. And since that’s the closest field office to our target in Iowa, I threw my hat in the ring. When he asked if I minded working with you on the case, I didn’t argue.”

She nodded, starting to feel almost guilty for wondering if he had any other reason for wanting the job. While she had been harboring some sort of feelings for him (whether strictly physical or somehow emotional, she had never been sure), he had never given her any reason to assume he felt the same. It was far too easy to recall coming on to him when she had first met him out in Nebraska and then getting rejected.

Let’s just hope he’s forgotten all about that, she thought. I’m a different person now, he’s far too busy to worry himself with me, and we’re working together now. Water under the bridge.

“So how about you?” she asked. “What are your initial thoughts?”

“I think he has no intention of killing the women,” Ellington said. “No clues, no showing off, and, like you, I think it’s got to be a local doing it. I think he’s maybe collecting them…for what purpose, I won’t speculate. But that worries me, if I’m right.”

It worried Mackenzie, too. If there was someone out there kidnapping women, he would eventually run out of room. And maybe interest…which meant he’d have to stop sooner or later. And while that was theoretically a good thing, it also meant that his trail would go cold without any further scenes to possibly leave evidence at.

“I think you’re right about him collecting them,” she said. “He’s coming after them in a vulnerable state—while they’re messing with cars or busted tires. It means he’s sneaking up rather than being in your face. He’s likely timid.”

He grinned and said, “Huh. That’s a good observation.”

His grin turned into a smile that she had to look away from, knowing that they had a habit of locking eyes and letting the stares linger a bit too long. Instead, she turned her eyes back out to the blue sky and the clouds while the Midwest quickly approached below them.

***

With very little luggage between them, Mackenzie and Ellington made their way through the airport without any trouble. During the tail end of the flight, Ellington informed Mackenzie that plans had already been made (presumably while she had been rushing to her apartment and then to the airport). She and Ellington were to meet two local field agents and work with them to get the case wrapped up as quickly as possible. With no need to stop by the luggage carousel, they were able to meet with the agents with no problem.

They met in one of the countless Starbucks in the airport. She let Ellington lead the way because it was apparent that McGrath saw him as the lead on the case. Why else would he leave Ellington in charge of knowing where to meet the field agents? Why else would Ellington have been given a proper heads-up, with plenty of time to comfortably make his flight on time?

The two agents were hard to miss. Mackenzie sighed internally when she saw that they were both men. One of them, though, looked like he was brand new. There was no way the guy was any older than twenty-four. His partner looked rather hardened and older—probably reaching fifty any day now.

Ellington headed straight for them and Mackenzie followed. Neither of the agents stood but the older one offered his hand to Ellington as they approached the table.

“Agents Heideman and Thorsson, I take it?” Ellington asked.

“Guilty,” the older man said. “I’m Thorsson, and my partner here is Heideman.”

“Good to meet you,” Ellington said. “I’m Special Agent Ellington and this is my partner, Agent White.”

They all shook hands in a way that had become almost tedious to Mackenzie ever since she had joined the bureau. It was almost like a formality, an awkward thing that needed to be done in order to get to the task at hand. She noticed that when Heideman shook her hand, his grip was weak and sweaty. He didn’t look nervous but perhaps a bit shy or introverted.

“So how far out are the crime scenes?” Ellington asked.

“The closest one is about an hour away,” Thorsson said. “The others are all within ten or fifteen minutes of one another.”

“Have there been any updates since early this morning?” Mackenzie asked.

“Zero,” Thorsson said. “That’s one of the reasons we called you guys in. This guy has taken three women so far and we can’t generate as much as a single scrap of evidence. It’s gotten so bad that the state is considering the use of cameras along the highway. The hurdle there, though, is that you can’t really keep over seventy-five miles of back road under surveillance with cameras.”

“Well, you technically could,” Heideman said. “But that’s a ton of cameras and a huge chunk of change. So some folks at the state level are only viewing it as a last-ditch effort.”

“Can we go ahead and see the first scene then?” Ellington asked.

“Sure,” Thorsson said. “Do you guys need to handle hotels and things like that first?”

“No,” Mackenzie said. “Let’s get to work for now. If you guys are saying there’s that much road that needs to be covered, we can’t waste any time.”

As Thorsson and Heideman stood, Ellington gave her a peculiar look. She couldn’t tell if he was impressed with her dedication to get out to the first scene as quickly as possible or if he found it amusing that she wasn’t letting him take the entire lead on this. What she hoped he couldn’t sense was that the thought of going anywhere near a hotel with Ellington made her feel far too many emotions at once.

They left the Starbucks in something of a single file line. Mackenzie was slightly touched when Ellington waited for her, making sure she didn’t bring up the back of the line.

“You know,” Thorsson said, looking back over his shoulder, “I’m glad you guys want to get out there right away. There’s a bad vibe going around about this whole thing. You can feel it when you talk to the local police force and it’s starting to rub off on us, too.”

“What kind of vibe?” Mackenzie asked.

Thorsson and Heideman shared a foreboding look between them before Thorsson’s shoulders slumped a bit and he answered: “Like it’s just not going to happen. I’ve never seen anything like it. There’s not a single clue to be had. The guy’s like a ghost.”

“Well, hopefully we can help with that,” Ellington said.

“I hope so,” Thorsson said. “Because as of right now, the general feeling among everyone working this case is that we might never find this guy.”

CHAPTER THREE

Mackenzie was rather surprised that the local office had provided Thorsson and Heideman with a Suburban. After her own clunker and the template rental cars she’d been stuck with over the past few months, she felt like she was traveling in style while sitting in the back with Ellington. When they arrived at the first scene an hour and ten minutes later, she was almost glad to be out of it, though. She wasn’t used to such nice perks with her position and it made her feel a little uncomfortable.

Thorsson parked along the edge of State Route 14, a basic two-lane back road that wound through the forests of rural Iowa. The road was bordered with trees on both sides. During the few miles they had been on this road, Mackenzie had seen a few small dirt roads that seemed to have been long forgotten, chained off by a thin cable and two posts on either side of the tracks. Other than those few breaks, there was nothing more than trees.

Thorsson and Heideman led them past a few local cops who gave perfunctory waves as they passed. Up ahead, in front of two parked police cars, was a little red Subaru. The two driver’s side tires were completely flat.

“What’s the police force like around here?” Mackenzie asked.

“Small,” Thorsson said. “The nearest town to here is a little place called Bent Creek. Population of about nine hundred. The police force consists of one sheriff—who is back there with those other guys—two deputies, and seven officers. They had a few suits from Des Moines come in but when we showed up, they stepped back. It’s the FBI’s problem now. That kind of thing.”

“So they’re glad we’re here, in other words?” Ellington asked.

“Oh, absolutely,” Thorsson said.

They approached the car and all circled it for a moment. Mackenzie took a look back at the officers. Only one of them seemed legitimately interested in what the visiting FBI agents were doing. As far as she was concerned, that was fine with her. She’d had her fair share of meddling small-town police officers making things harder than they had to be. It would be nice to work a job without having to tiptoe around the sensitivities and egos of the local PD.

“Has the car already been dusted for prints?” Mackenzie asked.

“Yeah, earlier this morning,” Heideman said. “Help yourself.”

Mackenzie opened the passenger side door. A brief look around told her that while the vehicle might have been dusted for prints, nothing had yet been removed and tagged as evidence. A cell phone still sat in the passenger seat. A pack of gum sat on top of a few scattered and folded pieces of paper in the center console.

“This is the author’s car, correct?” Mackenzie asked.

“It is,” Thorsson said. “Delores Manning.”

Mackenzie continued checking the car. She found Manning’s sunglasses, a mostly empty address book, a few copies of The Tin House scattered in the back seat, and spare change here and there. The trunk offered only a box of books. There were eighteen copies of a book called Love Blocked by Delores Manning.

“Was everything back here dusted for prints?” Mackenzie asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Heideman said. “It’s just a box of books, right?”

“Yes, but some are missing.”

“She came from a signing,” Thorsson said. “Chances are pretty good she sold some or gave some away.”

It wasn’t anything worth arguing about so she let it go. Still, Mackenzie flipped through two of the books. They had both been signed by Manning on the title page.

She put the books back into the box and then started to study the road. She walked along the edge, looking for any indentations where something might have been set up that would have flattened the tires. She looked over to Ellington and was pleased to see that he was already studying the flats. From where she stood, she could see the glittering shards of glass still sticking out of the tires.

There was more of the glass in the road ahead. The bit of sunlight that managed to break through the tree branches overhead bounced off of them in a way that was eerily pretty. She walked over to it and squatted down for a better look.

It was obvious that the glass had been placed there intentionally. It was located primarily close to the broken yellow lines in the center of the road. It was scattered here and there like sand but the main concentration had been spaced out to ensure that anyone driving along would run directly over it. A few larger shards remained in the road; the car had apparently missed these, as they had not been ground down into crumb-like bits. She picked up one of these larger pieces and studied it.

The glass was dark at first glance but as Mackenzie took a closer look, she saw that it had been painted black. To kill the glare of approaching headlights, she thought. Someone driving at night would see glass in their headlights…but not if it was painted black.

She selected a few pieces from the debris and scratched at a few larger pieces with her fingernail. The glass underneath was two different colors; most of it was clear but some of it had a very slight green tint to it. It was far too thick to be from any sort of drinking bottle or common jar. It had the thickness of something that a potter might make. Some if it looked to be easily as much as an inch and a half in width even after it had been broken and then shattered by Delores Manning’s car.

“Anyone notice that this glass has been spray-painted?” she asked.

Along the side of the road, the officers were looking to one another as if confused. Even Thorsson and Heideman gave one another a quizzical look.

“That’s a no,” Thorsson said.

“Has any of it been bagged and analyzed yet?” Mackenzie asked.

“Bagged, yes,” Thorsson said. “Analyzed, no. But there’s a team on it right now. We should have some sort of results in a few hours. I guess they would have eventually gotten back to us on the spray paint.”

“And this glass was not at any of the other scenes, is that correct?”

“That’s right.”

Mackenzie got to her feet, looking down at the glass as she started to paint a picture of the kind of suspect they might be looking for.

No glass at the previous scenes, she thought. That means the suspect was purposeful about this one woman. Why? Maybe the first two disappearances were just coincidence. Maybe the subject just happened to be in the right place at the right time. And if that was the case, he’s definitely a local—a rural killer, not an urban one. But he’s smart and calculated. He’s not just doing his tasks by the seat of his pants.

Ellington came over to her and inspected the glass for himself. Without looking up at her, he asked: “Any initial thoughts?”

“A few.”

“Such as?”

“He’s a rural guy. Likely a local, as we thought. I also think this one was planned. The flat tires…he did it on purpose. If the glass was not present at the other scenes, he set it out only this time. It makes me think he had no control over the other two. It was just luck on his part. But this one…this one he had to work for.”

“You think it’s worth speaking to family?” Ellington asked.

She could not tell if he was quizzing her in some weird way like Bryers had once done or if he was genuinely interested in her methodology and approach.

“Might be the fastest way to get any answers for right now,” she said. “Even if it nets nothing, it’s a task completed.”

“That sounds like a robot talking,” Ellington said with a smile.

Ignoring him, Mackenzie walked back over to the car where Thorsson and Heideman had been watching them.

“Do we know where Delores Manning lives?” she asked.

“Well, she lives in Buffalo, New York,” Thorsson said. “But she has family out near Sigourney.”

“That’s in Iowa, too, right?”

“It is,” Thorsson said. “Her mother lives about ten minutes outside of the town. Father is deceased. No one has informed them of her disappearance yet. From what we can tell, she’s only been missing for twenty-six hours or so. And while we can’t confirm it, we can’t help but wonder if she paid her family a visit while she was so close because of her book signing in Cedar Rapids.”

“I think they should probably be informed,” Mackenzie said.

“Same here,” Ellington said, joining them.

“Be my guest, then,” Thorsson chuckled. “Sigourney is about an hour and fifteen minutes away. We’d love to tag along,” he added sarcastically, “but that wasn’t in our orders.”

As he said this, one of the policemen joined them. The badge he wore indicated that this was the sheriff of the area.

“You need us around for anything?” he asked.

“Nope,” Ellington said. “Maybe just the name of a decent hotel around here.”

“There’s only one back in Bent Creek,” the sheriff said. “So that’s the only one I can really recommend.”

“Well then, it looks like we’ll take your recommendation. And we’ll also need one for a rental car in Bent Creek.”

“I can get you fixed up,” the sheriff said, leaving it at that.

With a slight sense of feeling displaced, Mackenzie walked back to the Suburban and took her place in the back seat. As the three other agents piled in, Mackenzie started to think about those little dirt tracks off of State Route 14. Who owned that property? Where did the roads lead?

As they headed toward Bent Creek, the country roads seemed to present more and more questions in Mackenzie’s mind…some menial but some very pressing. She collected them all as she thought about the broken glass in the road. She tried to imagine someone painting that glass with the clear intention of causing someone’s car to break down.

It spoke of more than just intent. It indicated careful planning and knowing the flow of traffic along State Route 14 at that time of night.

Our guy is smart in a dangerous sort of way, she thought. He’s also a planner and seems to be going after women only.

She started to put a profile together for such a suspect and instantly started to feel a sense of pressure…of the need to move quickly. She felt he was somewhere within this little rural hole of trees and winding roads, breaking up more glass, spraying it with spray paint.

And planning to capture another victim.

CHAPTER FOUR

Delores Manning was thinking of her mother when she opened her eyes. Her mother, who lived in a shit-kicking mobile home park just outside of Sigourney. The woman was very proud, very stubborn. The plan had been for Delores to visit her after the signing in Cedar Rapids. Having just signed a contract for a three-book deal with her current publisher, Delores had written a check for $7,000, hoping her mother would take it and use it wisely. Maybe it was snobby, but Delores was embarrassed that her mother was on welfare, that she had to use food stamps to buy groceries. It had been that way since her father died and—

The foggy thoughts of her mother drifted off as her eyes started to grow accustomed to the darkness she found herself in. She was sitting down with her back pressed against something very hard and almost cool to the touch. Slowly, she got to her feet. When she did, she struck her head on something that felt exactly like the surface against her back.

Confused, she reached up and could not extend her arms very far at all. As panic started to creep in, her eyes realized that there were tiny slats of light falling into the darkness. Directly in front of her were three rectangular bars of light. The bars alone filled her in on her situation.

She was in some kind of container…she was pretty sure it was made of steel or some other kind of metal. The container was no more than four feet tall, not allowing her to fully stand. It seemed to be no deeper than four feet and about the same width. She started to take shallow breaths, instantly feeling claustrophobic.

She pressed herself against the front wall of the container and drew in fresh air through the rectangular slats. Each slat was roughly six inches tall and maybe three inches across. When she drew in the air through her nose, she detected an earthy smell and something sweet yet unpleasant.

Somewhere further off in the distance, so faint it may as well have been on another world, she thought she heard a sort of squealing noise. Machinery? Maybe some type of animal? Yes, an animal…but she had no idea what kind. Pigs, maybe?

With her breaths coming more naturally now, she took a step back in her crouched position and then peered through the slats.

Outside, she saw what looked to be the interior of a barn or some other old wooden building. Perhaps twenty feet ahead of her, she could see the door to the barn. Murky sunlight came in through the warped frame where the door did not set flush against it. While she could not see much, she saw enough to gauge that she was probably in very serious trouble.

It was evident in the edge of the bolted door she could just barely see through the slats of the container. She whimpered and pushed against the front of the container. There was no give—not so much as a creaking noise.

She felt panic creeping up again so knew she’d have to use the little bit of logic and calmness she now possessed. She ran her hands along the bottom of the container’s door. She was hoping to find hinges, maybe something with screws or bolts that she could potentially work on. She wasn’t very strong, but if even one screw was either loose or crooked…

Again, there was nothing. She tried the same thing on the back and found nothing there as well.

In an act of absolute helplessness, she kicked at the door as hard as she could. When that did no good, she went to the back of the container and got a running start to throw her right shoulder into it. All that accomplished was having her rebound and fall backward. She hit her head on the side of the container and fell hard to her backside.

A scream rose up in her throat but she didn’t know if that would be the best thing to do. She could easily recall the man from the truck on the road and how he had attacked her. Did she really want him to come rushing to her?

No, she did not. Think, she told herself. Use that creative brain of yours and figure a way out of this.

But she could think of nothing. So, while she was able to choke down the scream that wanted to come out, she was unable to hold back the tears. She kicked at the front of the container and then fell into the back corner. She wept as quietly as she could, rocking back and forth in a seated position and looking to the shafts of dusty light that spilled in through the slats.

For now, it was all she could think to do.

CHAPTER FIVE

Mackenzie did not like the fact that her mind brought up dozens of clichéd stereotypes as she and Ellington pulled into the entrance of the Sigourney Oaks Mobile Home Court. The mobile homes were all dusty and looked to be on their last legs. The vehicles parked in front of most of them were in the same shape. In the dead yard of one of the trailers they passed, two men sat shirtless in lawn chairs. A cooler of beer rested between them, as well as several empty and crushed cans…at 4:35 in the afternoon.

The home of Tammy Manning, Delores Manning’s mother, was located directly in the middle of the park. Ellington parked the rental car behind a beaten up old Chevy pickup. The rental car looked better than the vehicles in the park, but not by much. The selection at Smith Brothers Auto had been meager and they had ended up selecting a 2008 Ford Fusion that was in dire need of a paint job and a new set of tires.

As they walked up the rickety front steps to the door, Mackenzie made a quick sweep of the place. A few kids were rolling toy cars along in the dirt. A pre-teen girl walked blindly with her eyes glued to a cell phone, her belly exposed through the dirty shirt she wore. An old man two trailers down was lying on the ground, peering up under a lawnmower with a wrench in his hand and oil on his pants.

Ellington knocked on the door and it was answered almost instantly. The woman that answered the door was pretty in a plain way. She looked to be in her fifties and the strands of gray in her otherwise black hair stood out in a way that was almost like decoration rather than the signs of age. She looked tired but the smell that came off of her breath when she said “Who are you?” made Mackenzie pretty sure that she’d been drinking.

Ellington answered but made sure not to step in front of Mackenzie when he did so. “I’m Agent Ellington and this is Agent White, with the FBI,” he said.