Page 78 of The Lost Bones
Phoebe’s disappearance case belonged to the Seattle PD. The FBI hadn’t touched it. Why had a retired FBI agent decided to take an interest in it a whole year after she was last seen?
FORTY
Nick placed a glass of wine in front of Mackenzie at her desk.
“What’s the occasion?” She closed the CSU’s report on Sterling’s abduction site. Her eyes had started to ache from trying to look for something new. But once again the only thing their perpetrator had left was muskrat fur from the coat they couldn’t identify.
“The occasion is that I don’t want to waste this bottle, which will happen if we don’t finish it today.” He took a sip from his mug and made a face. “It’s basically vinegar.”
Mackenzie tasted it. “Jesus, Nick. When did you open it?”
“A few days ago.” He straightened, all business. “Anyway, I looked up Cameron Fletcher and called my friend at the Bureau. Fletcher retired eighteen months ago and has no connection with Phoebe Townsend.”
“If he had no connection with the victim, why was he so interested?” Mackenzie wondered, chugging the wine like it was medicine. Fortunately, it was late at night, and they were the only ones left in the office.
Mackenzie liked the station at night. There were a few uniforms around on the graveyard shift, and the cleaning crew, but activity had collapsed. It felt like time had slowed down and she could savor being in the belly of it all. Sometimes it was easy to forget how grim and violent her world was, how every day she was confronted with the mind-boggling actions people could be driven to. At night, when she heard the janitor pass by the office humming “Killing Me Softly”, she would be reminded.
“I got an address for Fletcher. He lives in Tacoma now,” Nick said disrupting her train of thought. “We’ll go there first thing tomorrow.”
She nodded. “I mean, he must have contacts. Maybe there was something about this case that got him interested.”
“One can only hope.” He topped up his mug with more wine and offered her some, which she refused. “Sterling is a tall, healthy man. It would be no easy feat to abduct him.”
“Tox screen for Courtney and Debbie showed chloroform in their systems. That’s what must have been used on Sterling.” She waited for the wine to make her feel light-headed and shrink her anxiety. “It’s interesting how there’s no other evidence. This person abducted four people, killed three in different ways, left their bodies at different locations… I didn’t expect such a clean job.”
“Why not?”
“Because of their motivation. According to Dr. Turner, this is someone with a deranged side triggered by that documentary and latching on to me. It’s not some hardened criminal. And still the crimes have some standard of professionalism to them.”
“Maybe it’s someone from the CSU or medical examiner’s office,” Nick joked.
“They would certainly have enough knowledge to do a clean job and make things harder for us.”
He stared at her like she was speaking a different language. “Mack, I was kidding.”
“I’m not!” Maybe the wine was getting to her. “I saw the men in that house engaging in illegal activities. Why is it ridiculous to assume that the person we’re looking for is someone we’re working with? Perhaps all those years of cutting open bodies or cleaning up after crime scenes damaged something inside them.”
“We are trying to track whoever sent those questions to the production house and broke into Valerie Cohen’s office,” Nick pointed out. “Austin is very keen to follow up on that report. I bet he’ll dig up something.”
Mackenzie’s heartbeat was tied in a strangling knot in her throat. No matter which way she turned, she was always under a looming shadow. How many enemies did she have?
“I’m not denying that it’s impossible.” He cracked his knuckles. “But we can’t get that paranoid without any evidence.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “We can’t fight this alone, Mack.”
“Then why does it feel like we are?”
He didn’t reply, and they shared a silence. A silence pregnant with fear and suspicion.
“Your lips are purple,” he said after a while.
She touched them on reflex and took out a tissue to wipe them.
Why was he looking at my lips?
Mackenzie heard it first. The sound of heels clicking against the floor. Jenna waltzed in, wearing her classic boots.
“What are you still doing here?” Nick asked.
She waved a paper in her hand. “Tracking down the key you gave me.”
