Killer Instinct
Page 41
I finally stopped for a breath. For a few seconds, Sterling just stood there.
“You said that the UNSUB was comfortable with firearms, but less sure of himself when it came to unarmed confrontations. I was the easy target in that room, and I was the one he went for.”
Maybe Christopher had reached for me because I was the one talking. Maybe he’d been actively trying not to start a fight and thought that I was the only one of the three of us who wouldn’t respond with a punch.
Or maybe he was the kind of guy who liked asserting himself against women.
“Were there any firearms in the house?” Sterling asked. I got the sense that the question had slipped out. She hadn’t meant to ask it.
“I didn’t see any guns.”
Agent Sterling’s phone buzzed, and she held up her hand, effectively putting me on hold.
“Sterling.” She answered the phone with her name. Whatever the person on the other end of the phone had to say, it wasn’t good news. She was like a spring that had been coiled tight, every muscle tense. “You’re kidding me. When?” Sterling was silent for long enough to make me think that “when” wasn’t the only question being answered. “I can be on the road in five.”
She ended the call abruptly.
“Bad news?” I asked.
“Dead body.”
Those words were probably meant as a conversation ender, but I had to ask. “Our UNSUB?”
Sterling tightened her hand around her phone.
“Is this the point where you tell me to stay out of it?” I asked.
Sterling closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again. “The victim is Trina Simms, and neighbors heard screaming and called 911 while her son Christopher was at the police station with Briggs.” Sterling ran a hand through her hair. “So, yes, this is where I tell you to stay out of it.”
Whether she’d wanted to or not, she’d listened to what I had to say about Christopher. Hearing from Briggs had been like a splash of cold water in her face.
I was wrong, I thought. The bits and pieces I’d picked up from my visit to Broken Springs—none of that mattered now. Trina was dead, and Christopher had been with Briggs when it happened.
He’s just a guy. A guy with a dark truck and a mother who is a real piece of work. Who was a piece of work.
I pictured Trina, who thought my shoes were precious and that Daniel Redding would be released from prison on an appeal.
“Does Dean’s dad have any open appeals?” I asked.
Agent Sterling didn’t bat an eye at the change of subject. “None.” She walked over to Briggs’s desk and pulled something out of one of the drawers. She shut the drawer and walked back to me. “Put your foot on the couch,” she ordered.
That was when I remembered. The next time you take so much as a step out of Quantico without my permission, I’ll have you fitted for an ankle tracker.
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Sterling asked. She looked like Judd had when we’d arrived back at the house. “I made you a promise,” she told me, “and I always keep my promises.” I didn’t move, and she knelt down and clipped the tracker in place. “If you leave the yard, I’ll know it. If you try to remove the tracker, I’ll know it. If you violate the perimeter set into this anklet, a silent alarm will go off, sending a text directly to my phone and directly to Briggs’s. The GPS in this anklet will allow us to pinpoint your location, and I will drag you back here kicking and screaming.”
She stood back up. My mouth was dry. I couldn’t force out an objection.
“You have good instincts,” Sterling told me. “You have a good eye. Someday, you could be a very good agent.”
The tracker was lighter than it looked, but the added weight, however slight, made my entire body feel heavy. Knowing I couldn’t leave, knowing that I couldn’t do anything—I hated it. I felt useless and weak and very, very young.
Sterling stood up. “But that day, Cassandra, is not today.”
YOU
You can picture Trina Simms’s last moments perfectly in your mind. In fact, now that the deed is done, you can’t stop picturing it, over and over again.
Hands bound together. Plastic biting into fleshy wrists. Knife. Blood.
Your brain re-creates the moment in bright, Technicolor detail. Her skin isn’t unblemished. It isn’t smooth. The brand sinks in, in, in….
Burning flesh smells the same whether or not it’s supple, whether or not it’s young. Just thinking about the brand sinking in, you can smell it. With each breath, you picture—
Rope around her neck. Dull, lifeless eyes.
Trina Simms was always shrill, deluded, demanding. She’s not so demanding now.
Every lead we’d managed to turn up in this case had ended with a brick wall. We’d discovered that Emerson was having an affair with her professor, and then he’d turned up just as dead as she was. We’d sifted through the students’ internet profiles only to find that every single one of them had an alibi. Michael, Dean, and I had gone to talk to Trina Simms. We’d been able to rule her out as a suspect, but hadn’t realized that the killer had her in his sights.
If my instincts are so good, I wondered, then why didn’t I see this coming? Why was I so focused on Christopher Simms?
I was supposed to be a Natural. I was supposed to be good at this. Yeah, right. So good that I hadn’t realized Locke was a killer. So good that for all I knew, while I’d been profiling Christopher and talking myself into suspicions, the UNSUB might have been lurking nearby, just waiting for us to leave.
Nothing we’d done on this case had turned out the way it was supposed to, and now I’d been put on an electronic leash. Like a criminal.
“As far as accessories go, it leaves something to be desired.” Lia’s response to the tracker secured around my ankle was predictably blasé. “Although that exact shade of black plastic does bring out the color of your eyes.”
“Shut up.”
“Cranky, cranky.” Lia waggled a finger at me. I smacked her hand away. “You have to admit that it’s deliciously ironic,” she said, stowing her waggling finger safely away.
I didn’t have to admit anything.
“Of all of us,” Lia continued, “you’re the least likely to be arrested. In fact, you might be the only one of us who hasn’t been arrested. And yet…” She gestured toward my ankle.
“Yuk it up,” I told her. “You might be next. Agent Sterling probably orders these things in bulk.”
“Bit of a double standard, don’t you think? The boys sneak out and get sentenced to each other’s company. You sneak out, and—”
“Enough,” I told Lia. “Sitting around and talking about it isn’t going to change anything. Besides, this isn’t our biggest problem.”
Somebody still had to tell Dean what had happened to Trina Simms.
“We went to see her, and now she’s dead.” Dean summarized the entire situation in a single sentence.
“Temporal proximity doesn’t imply causation,” Sloane said, patting him on the shoulder—the Sloane version of a comforting there, there.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Michael cut in. The five of us were gathered in the room the boys were now—apparently—sharing. Michael leaned back against the doorjamb and crossed one ankle over the other. “Was Trina already in the killer’s sights, or did our visit somehow set the UNSUB off?”
Dean considered the question. “Emerson’s murder was fairly well-planned.” Flipping into profiler mode kept him from getting dragged back under to the dark place, but even when Dean was trying to distance himself from what had happened, he never stopped referring to Emerson by name. “The presentation of her corpse was precise. Based on our interactions with Sterling and Briggs over the last few days, I’m guessing they don’t have much in the way of physical evidence. We’re looking at someone with a high level of attention to detail—all of which suggests that our killer would be methodical in selecting his victims.”
“You said that the UNSUB was comfortable with firearms, but less sure of himself when it came to unarmed confrontations. I was the easy target in that room, and I was the one he went for.”
Maybe Christopher had reached for me because I was the one talking. Maybe he’d been actively trying not to start a fight and thought that I was the only one of the three of us who wouldn’t respond with a punch.
Or maybe he was the kind of guy who liked asserting himself against women.
“Were there any firearms in the house?” Sterling asked. I got the sense that the question had slipped out. She hadn’t meant to ask it.
“I didn’t see any guns.”
Agent Sterling’s phone buzzed, and she held up her hand, effectively putting me on hold.
“Sterling.” She answered the phone with her name. Whatever the person on the other end of the phone had to say, it wasn’t good news. She was like a spring that had been coiled tight, every muscle tense. “You’re kidding me. When?” Sterling was silent for long enough to make me think that “when” wasn’t the only question being answered. “I can be on the road in five.”
She ended the call abruptly.
“Bad news?” I asked.
“Dead body.”
Those words were probably meant as a conversation ender, but I had to ask. “Our UNSUB?”
Sterling tightened her hand around her phone.
“Is this the point where you tell me to stay out of it?” I asked.
Sterling closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again. “The victim is Trina Simms, and neighbors heard screaming and called 911 while her son Christopher was at the police station with Briggs.” Sterling ran a hand through her hair. “So, yes, this is where I tell you to stay out of it.”
Whether she’d wanted to or not, she’d listened to what I had to say about Christopher. Hearing from Briggs had been like a splash of cold water in her face.
I was wrong, I thought. The bits and pieces I’d picked up from my visit to Broken Springs—none of that mattered now. Trina was dead, and Christopher had been with Briggs when it happened.
He’s just a guy. A guy with a dark truck and a mother who is a real piece of work. Who was a piece of work.
I pictured Trina, who thought my shoes were precious and that Daniel Redding would be released from prison on an appeal.
“Does Dean’s dad have any open appeals?” I asked.
Agent Sterling didn’t bat an eye at the change of subject. “None.” She walked over to Briggs’s desk and pulled something out of one of the drawers. She shut the drawer and walked back to me. “Put your foot on the couch,” she ordered.
That was when I remembered. The next time you take so much as a step out of Quantico without my permission, I’ll have you fitted for an ankle tracker.
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Sterling asked. She looked like Judd had when we’d arrived back at the house. “I made you a promise,” she told me, “and I always keep my promises.” I didn’t move, and she knelt down and clipped the tracker in place. “If you leave the yard, I’ll know it. If you try to remove the tracker, I’ll know it. If you violate the perimeter set into this anklet, a silent alarm will go off, sending a text directly to my phone and directly to Briggs’s. The GPS in this anklet will allow us to pinpoint your location, and I will drag you back here kicking and screaming.”
She stood back up. My mouth was dry. I couldn’t force out an objection.
“You have good instincts,” Sterling told me. “You have a good eye. Someday, you could be a very good agent.”
The tracker was lighter than it looked, but the added weight, however slight, made my entire body feel heavy. Knowing I couldn’t leave, knowing that I couldn’t do anything—I hated it. I felt useless and weak and very, very young.
Sterling stood up. “But that day, Cassandra, is not today.”
YOU
You can picture Trina Simms’s last moments perfectly in your mind. In fact, now that the deed is done, you can’t stop picturing it, over and over again.
Hands bound together. Plastic biting into fleshy wrists. Knife. Blood.
Your brain re-creates the moment in bright, Technicolor detail. Her skin isn’t unblemished. It isn’t smooth. The brand sinks in, in, in….
Burning flesh smells the same whether or not it’s supple, whether or not it’s young. Just thinking about the brand sinking in, you can smell it. With each breath, you picture—
Rope around her neck. Dull, lifeless eyes.
Trina Simms was always shrill, deluded, demanding. She’s not so demanding now.
Every lead we’d managed to turn up in this case had ended with a brick wall. We’d discovered that Emerson was having an affair with her professor, and then he’d turned up just as dead as she was. We’d sifted through the students’ internet profiles only to find that every single one of them had an alibi. Michael, Dean, and I had gone to talk to Trina Simms. We’d been able to rule her out as a suspect, but hadn’t realized that the killer had her in his sights.
If my instincts are so good, I wondered, then why didn’t I see this coming? Why was I so focused on Christopher Simms?
I was supposed to be a Natural. I was supposed to be good at this. Yeah, right. So good that I hadn’t realized Locke was a killer. So good that for all I knew, while I’d been profiling Christopher and talking myself into suspicions, the UNSUB might have been lurking nearby, just waiting for us to leave.
Nothing we’d done on this case had turned out the way it was supposed to, and now I’d been put on an electronic leash. Like a criminal.
“As far as accessories go, it leaves something to be desired.” Lia’s response to the tracker secured around my ankle was predictably blasé. “Although that exact shade of black plastic does bring out the color of your eyes.”
“Shut up.”
“Cranky, cranky.” Lia waggled a finger at me. I smacked her hand away. “You have to admit that it’s deliciously ironic,” she said, stowing her waggling finger safely away.
I didn’t have to admit anything.
“Of all of us,” Lia continued, “you’re the least likely to be arrested. In fact, you might be the only one of us who hasn’t been arrested. And yet…” She gestured toward my ankle.
“Yuk it up,” I told her. “You might be next. Agent Sterling probably orders these things in bulk.”
“Bit of a double standard, don’t you think? The boys sneak out and get sentenced to each other’s company. You sneak out, and—”
“Enough,” I told Lia. “Sitting around and talking about it isn’t going to change anything. Besides, this isn’t our biggest problem.”
Somebody still had to tell Dean what had happened to Trina Simms.
“We went to see her, and now she’s dead.” Dean summarized the entire situation in a single sentence.
“Temporal proximity doesn’t imply causation,” Sloane said, patting him on the shoulder—the Sloane version of a comforting there, there.
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Michael cut in. The five of us were gathered in the room the boys were now—apparently—sharing. Michael leaned back against the doorjamb and crossed one ankle over the other. “Was Trina already in the killer’s sights, or did our visit somehow set the UNSUB off?”
Dean considered the question. “Emerson’s murder was fairly well-planned.” Flipping into profiler mode kept him from getting dragged back under to the dark place, but even when Dean was trying to distance himself from what had happened, he never stopped referring to Emerson by name. “The presentation of her corpse was precise. Based on our interactions with Sterling and Briggs over the last few days, I’m guessing they don’t have much in the way of physical evidence. We’re looking at someone with a high level of attention to detail—all of which suggests that our killer would be methodical in selecting his victims.”
